Film screening + Q&A

The Climate Action Festival is excited to bring you the Aotearoa New Zealand premiere of The New Peasants by Happen Films. We'll watch the film together and enjoy a Q&A with filmmaker, Antoinette Wilson and the featured family (who will Zoom call in from Australia).

The film starts at 7pm. Please join us from 6:15pm — doors open early so you can grab a drink, enjoy a tasty pre-film bite, and explore local groups taking action on climate.

This event is part of the 2025 Climate Action Festival. See the full program here.

Watch the trailer:

Film synopsis

What happens when the values of the culture you’ve always known no longer align with how you see the world?

The New Peasants offers an intimate look into the life of Meg, Patrick, Zephyr, and Woody. A family who, for 20 years, have been transitioning away from modern industrial culture toward a radically simple, sustainable, and beautiful way of life.

Concerns about the industrial food system and environmental crises provided the family’s initial motivation to live differently. Now it’s 15 years since they’ve eaten from a supermarket or owned a car. The household, living intentionally below the poverty line and meeting 80% of their needs without using money, is nonetheless rich in so many ways. Wealth is found in their cellar of preserved foods, connections with community, saved seeds, homesteading skills and the time to focus on what really matters in life. Yet the decision to live this way has brought profound challenges for their family, in the form of their eldest son’s encounters with the law. These experiences have produced immense grief, but, in the end, also great joy.

This film shares the unfolding journey of a family rejecting the mainstream culture and working to create a new one. A culture and economy that draw on ways of the past while stepping joyfully into the future. For everything they’ve let go, something has been gained. With every challenge, something learned.

This is one family’s response to the predicament of our time, offering an inspiring glimpse into the kind of future, culture, and economy we can create. This family’s way of living shows that transformative change begins at the home and community level and that we can all participate in creating a better world.