Greetings from the Sanguma film crew - we recently got together to celebrate Paul Wolffram and Adam Browne's return from Papua New Guinea.

Prior to our scheduled shoot in October last year, we partnered up with Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, a German Philanthropic fund, who provided the resources for us to bring Adam Browne onboard as cinematographer alongside Paul for the shoot.

Paul and Adam departed on 6 November 2022. Over almost three months in Papua New Guinea, they were able to accomplish a lot during their time in the Highlands.

During their stay in Port Moresby, Paul and Adam met up with local producer Spencer Wagane, who aided them in visiting the Tribal Foundation, a local NGO working on survivors of sorcery accusations and attacks.

From there, Paul and Adam flew up to Goroka and started the film work with Evelyn, focusing on the stories of three survivor families. Each family had been accused of sorcery and attacked, and all three were lucky to survive their attacks and suffered from horrific wounds. Our crew followed each family over many weeks as they sought to find a safe location to continue their lives. We worked with local authorities, NGOs, and the police, but unfortunately, most of the outcomes were unresolved.

Paul and Adam met many more survivors on our journeys through the Highlands and traveled to Wabag town to meet with the survivors of the Jacob Luke case where ten women were attacked in July 2022. This was a highly unstable area, with some incredible stories unfolding before our crew during their time there, but they were careful about security and never encountered anything that threatened their safety or put them at undue risk.

Both Paul and Adam worked hard for long hours during the shoot, lugging film equipment up and down mountains and working into the nights. Power supply was a constant issue, and communication was on and off.

Our crew departed Papua New Guinea on the second of February, 12 days earlier than intended, due to visa limits. We left Evelyn with $14,000.00 Kina ($6.5k NZD) of money we raised for her through our PledgeMe campaign that we ran for her in September last year.

Upon their return, we immediately began the post-production process. Annie Collins, one of the best feature editors in the country, has been working solidly for four weeks now, and we are very excited to be working with her. She thinks we have all of the material, emotional content, and stories to realise the feature. We shot a total of 92 hours of footage – 16TB, and will be working through this material for the next few months. Our goal is to have a rough cut ready by mid-2023 which we would use to secure the funds required for finishing the film - we would also look to bring Evelyn over to New Zealand to work with us during this time.

We are proud of what we accomplished during our time in Papua New Guinea, and we hope to continue this work with your support as we move into the rough cut stages of the film and beyond. 

Shu Run, Paul, Adam, Evelyn, and the rest of the Sanguma crew