Director Robert Sarkies Talks About His Mine Disaster Drama PIKE RIVER

Cinema Scholars takes a look at the New Zealand mine disaster drama Pike River, followed by an interview with director Robert Sarkies. Pike River is in Theaters and On Digital January 30, 2026, courtesy of Brainstorm Media.

Introduction

Unless you live in a cave, there’s no shortage of tragedies filling the nightly news, social media feeds, or even good old newspapers and magazines. From Mother Nature’s wrath or horrific accidents to endless wars and acts of terror, such events are capable of gripping a community, a country, or the entire world in anguish and disbelief.

Outsiders easily move on to tomorrow’s big headline. However, the people affected by these hardships continue to ask the difficult questions and seek answers and accountability. Especially in the case of catastrophes that are preventable. In Robert Sarkies’ inspiring new film Pike River, the director tells the real-life story of a New Zealand mining disaster and the tenacious women who fought for new laws and regulations to improve industrial safety standards.

Synopsis

It’s 2010 on the idyllic west coast of New Zealand’s southern island. As people head into town for jobs and school, others start their long commute into the mountains for work at the nearby Pike River Mine. Once there, the men (old timers and newcomers alike) ready themselves and gear up for another daily trek into the middle of the coal-rich mountain.

Just as the story begins to gain momentum, news of a terrible accident at the mine makes its way to town. Stunned loved ones immediately converge on the mining company looking for answers. As the days go on and the victims are presumed dead, a grieving mother and a widow forge an unlikely bond in perseverance and justice that will change industrial safety standards in New Zealand forever.

Discussion

As with any dramatic retelling of a dreadful event, Pike River can be a difficult watch. To relieve the anguish of a family, as well as a country, is a delicate matter. But Sarkies’ careful pacing and attention to detail in the quiet moments make the film as compelling as it is meaningful. While the initial shock of the disaster so early in the film may be jarring, the audience learns of the disaster as abruptly and informally as the survivors did in real life. With no warning and endless unanswered questions.

Beautifully shot with the help of cinematographer Gin Loane, the film features several sequences of the breathtaking New Zealand mountains while hinting at the menace within. Other fascinating visuals (like a billiards ball rolling into the dark, hidden tunnels beneath green felt) further emphasize the feeling of being trapped- literally and metaphorically.

Performances

While the overall subject matter of Pike River is obviously grim, screenwriter Fiona Samuel smartly focuses on survivors Anna Osborne (Melanie Lynsky) and Sonya Rockhouse (Robin Malcolm) and their plight to seek justice for their loved ones who perished.

Lynsky once again proves her moxie as the struggling widow with two grown children. Lynsky always wins points for her realism, but as Anna, she gets to go through the full gamut of emotion. Robin Malcolm expertly plays the heartstrings with her portrayal of bereaved mother Sonya. Her pain is visible not only in her eyes and on her face, but also in the distracted way she sometimes carries herself through the turmoil.

Conclusion

When the women finally join forces after a rocky start, the film really finds its feet. Though the heaviness of the disaster is never betrayed, Pike River takes on a whole new level of importance through their bond and the change they eventually exact together. This shift in tone is not only welcome in the context of the story, but it also propels the film from depressing to inspirational.

Interview

Cinema Scholars’ Rebecca Elliott recently chatted with Pike River director Robert Sarkies to discuss his latest drama. They talk about bringing true stories to life, finding their dream cast, and working with the real-life Sonya and Anna.

Rebecca Elliott:

Hello, and thank you for taking the time to chat with me today. We’re here to talk about your wonderful movie, Pike River. I noticed in your filmography that you directed Out Of The Blue, a film based on another unfortunate tragedy that happened in New Zealand. And now you’re telling the story of the Pike River Mine disaster. What draws you to these types of real-life stories? And tell me about approaching such delicate and triggering subject matter.

Robert Sarkies:

I guess I think I have a deep fear of making something that’s boring. I’ll be honest. The truth of it. I also don’t like to have to add drama to things all the time. I feel like when you choose these sorts of stories, for me anyway, the drama in them is inherent. That gives you a lot of permission as a storyteller to not need to egg it. Not need to dramatize it more. When the drama is inherent, you can just tell the story and put the characters inside that drama and see how they’ll respond. In truth, it’s quite a filmmaker’s reason for choosing these sorts of stories because I don’t need to worry about drama. It’s there.

Rebecca Elliott:

For sure, it’s there. But even though it is this dramatic story, you tell it in a really beautiful, captivating way. Of course, you feature the gorgeous New Zealand landscape. But another favorite sequence in the film is the billiard ball going down the tunnel in the billiard table. I loved that. But it also cued a feeling of being trapped, literally and metaphorically. Tell me about collaborating with your DP, Gin Loane, and how you captured such meaningful imagery.

Robert Sarkies:

I think with Gin, we both knew that we wanted to do two things at once. Which was, firstly, tell the story truthfully and make something that visually had an authenticity to it. So that’s the first thing. And that really was the most important thing because we were dealing with this true event, and we didn’t want to Hollywood it up. For want of a better term. But the second thing, and it’s almost the opposite of the first, is that we wanted it to be dramatic. We’re still filmmakers, and we were very conscious about wanting to use, I guess, the tools of cinema.

Or, in the case of Gin, cinematography, to draw people into the story in a visceral way. That’s why we’ve got things like that pool shot. The grade of the film, as I’m sure you will have seen, is very gritty. It’s actually quite a heavy grade. It doesn’t feel like it for most people when they see it. They just accept that that’s the land of New Zealand, West Coast coal. But it’s had a lot of thought put into it, really, to make it as real and therefore also as compelling as possible.

I have a big, weeks-long process, working with my cinema photographer. Pulling thousands of reference images, taking a lot of photographs ourselves. And figuring out scene by scene and shot by shot, exactly how we want this not to look, but to feel. That’s why I love working with cinematographers like Gin. Actually, I’ve worked with Greig Fraser, would you believe, back on Out of the Blue. My first New Zealand true story film. It was just before his career exploded in Hollywood. And both of those cinematographers are all about the feeling.

You think, “Oh, they create beautiful imagery,” and of course, they both do. But what they’re really doing is creating a feeling or helping me create a feeling. And all I need to do as a director is know what feeling I want to create and express that. So I don’t tend to express things technically to these sorts of artists because they are artists, these amazing cinematographers.

I tend to express myself in, “Well, this is the feeling that we’re trying to achieve in this scene,” I think. Then there’s a question, an interesting, creative question, “How might we get there?” Be it through lensing or grading or how we move the camera or how we choose not to move the camera. All of these things contribute. That’s the part of the thrill of it for me.

Rebecca Elliott:

Absolutely. I mean, I don’t know all the technical stuff, but I know when imagery gives a specific feeling. Even the beautiful landscape sequences give an ominous vibe. Like, nature’s so beautiful, but it can be terrible as well.

Robert Sarkies:

In addition to that, I think there’s always an opportunity for a metaphor, a subtle metaphor, quite often. I quite like subtle metaphor. I don’t like anything that’s too in your face. Although I guess the pool ball shot is pretty in your face. It’s not so subtle. But when we looked at the landscape in the opening scenes, you can see the strata on the mountains. This is actually the coal that twenty-nine men are buried in.

That’s a literal thing, but it’s also a metaphorical thing because I felt like the film itself was trying to dig into the layers of the story. Go into the seam, if you will, to try and discover the truth. I feel like with filmmaking, especially filmmaking in this modern era, our audience is so sophisticated that you can do stuff like that. It really doesn’t matter from my point of view if the audience knows that that’s what you’re doing as long as they get some feeling from it, and as long as what you’re doing is being done to create a feeling and, I guess, not to show off.

Rebecca Elliott:

Right. I totally get that. The disaster itself is obviously about the men who perished in the accident. But the film actually is very female-centric and focuses on the two women who fought for change. Tell me about casting your incredible two leads, Melanie Lynskey and Robyn Malcolm, and then what they brought to the characters that you maybe didn’t expect.

Robert Sarkies:

Well, it was dream casting from our point of view. They’re two of our most well-regarded and famous actors. Melanie Lynskey is, of course, very well known all around the world. Robyn Malcolm is a local treasure and hero in New Zealand and is building a name around the world. But she’s a superstar in New Zealand. We were very lucky because nothing about that casting was cynical, of course, to parentheses that. It helps fund the film, so yes. But they, just from the get-go, felt like the perfect actors to play these two women. Because there were a lot of parallels, a lot of similarities. But there were also really interesting differences.

Robyn Malcolm, as you’d expect from an actor, is quite a confident personality. She’s an actor. She’s very out there. Sonya Rockhouse, who she’s playing, is really the opposite of that. Sonya Rockhouse is someone who, at least initially in the story, is literally afraid of cameras. She shies away from the media. Which is an impossible situation when she’s involved in this huge media circus of 29 men being trapped in a mine. How do you deal with that? So that was interesting because Robyn had to find the truth of that, of being media shy. And she did that and then created a journey from that.

Rebecca Elliott:

That’s what they do!

Robert Sarkies:

I think that’s the magic of the art. My part was pretty simple. Here’s the magician showing his tricks. It was mostly, in the case of Pike River, to make sure that those actors had proper time with the real people they were playing. Because I felt, especially as a guy directing this quite female-centric story, that these two amazing actors really got the women they were playing in a way that you can’t even completely capture in a script. And you can’t talk about. You just have to have an innate understanding, and that just takes time.

I really prioritized getting the four of them together, often with me not even in the room, so that they could just talk woman to woman. Four middle-aged women- they won’t mind me saying that because that’s what they are- who seriously just got each other. And quite quickly. It didn’t actually, in the end, take a huge amount of time. In the end, I think the performances are more about the actual bond that was formed between the actor and the real subject rather than any trickery from the director. At a point, I realized the best thing I could do was stay out of the way.

Rebecca Elliott:

Let artists do their art, and you just keep them between the rails, I guess. I was going to ask about that if you had input from the real women, Anna and Sonya. And so I guess you did! Can you tell me about the type of conversations you had going into it? And then what did they think about the final film?

Robert Sarkies:

The real Anna and Sonya were involved from the get-go. We’re telling their story, so we had to, at the very least, get their permission. But we did a lot more than that. They hadn’t told their story before to anyone. They hadn’t written a book or had a book written about them. So we, the filmmakers, Fiona Samuel, the writer, were the first people that they had properly told their story to. Then we translated that into film. And they loved that process.

It was a process of being listened to by two people who felt that, for 15 years, they hadn’t been listened to by those in power. To sit down with empathetic filmmakers, a writer, and a director, and be listened to and questioned. So that we could understand their story and help the audience to walk in their shoes. Film as the empathy machine, right? Mm-hmm. Was hugely, hugely validating. Then, to have a movie made from that script? To meet these amazing actors, to spend a lot of time on set, just out of frame. We gave them their own little monitor and their own couple of chairs so they could sit and watch.

They knew their job wasn’t to comment. And they were very respectful of my process and the need, as long as they were generally happy with the screenplay, which they were, the need to let us get on with our job. Then the first time, when we screened the film to them… I’m here talking to you at home, and just in the other room is where I’ve got a projector. And we screened the film, and Sonya and Anna sat on a couple of armchairs in front of the producer and me.

We essentially watched them in silhouette while watching the film. I mean, they were very nervous. So were we, actually. It was a five-year process to get there. They were completely unconsciously mirroring what they were seeing on screen. When Robyn Malcolm reaches out for Melanie Lynskey’s hand at one point in the film, I was watching the real Sonya reaching out for Anna’s hand. It was just quite incredible. They were pretty stunned by the experience. I don’t mean stunned by the film.

Rebecca Elliott:

Oh, that’s such a cool story. I’m so glad I asked that question. It almost made me tear up when you talked about them grabbing hands. It’s like such an incredible bond. It’s beautiful.

Robert Sarkies:

It’s honest, that bond. They’ve just been off to Thailand together. Because they’re besties.

Rebecca Elliott:

They’ve been through so much together! Well, I think I’ve taken up enough of your time. But thank you so much for chatting with me about Pike River. It’s really wonderful.

Robert Sarkies:

Thanks, Rebecca. Really appreciate it.

Pike River is in Theaters and On Digital January 30, 2026, courtesy of Brainstorm Media.

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