‘LOMU’ and the Tongan Heart of a Global Rugby Icon

Prolific, multi‑award‑winning film‑maker Vea Mafile’o is co‑director of one of the most anticipated sports documentaries of the year, LOMU – a feature that revisits the life and legacy of Jonah Lomu, the winger whose power and pace reshaped modern rugby. She is also the latest person to face a wide‑ranging Q&A, reflecting on her creative influences, her politics and the communities she works alongside.

While the film sits in the documentary and arts space, its subject is unambiguously central to global sport. Lomu’s impact on Test rugby in the professional era, and on the commercial growth of international tournaments, makes any fresh exploration of his life relevant well beyond New Zealand. His story remains intertwined with how the international game is governed, marketed and remembered under the umbrella of World Rugby.

Reframing a Rugby Giant Through a Pacific Lens

One of the most striking insights Mafile’o shares from the making of LOMU is discovering that Jonah Lomu was a fluent Tongan speaker. She believes many people, including Tongans, would be surprised by just how Tongan Lomu was, and describes that discovery as “really special” during production.

For international audiences who mainly saw Lomu in a black jersey on the biggest stages, the detail of his language and cultural fluency underlines how Pacific heritage has shaped elite rugby. It also highlights the way players of Pacific descent have become central to national sides across the world, while often navigating questions of identity, representation and belonging.

The documentary, through Mafile’o’s Pacific‑led perspective, adds depth to the familiar highlight‑reel narrative of Lomu’s tries by foregrounding the communities and cultures that formed him. In competitive terms, that cultural framing matters: it helps explain why rugby has become a pathway and a point of pride for many Māori and Pasifika families, and why Test rugby selection decisions can resonate far beyond the field.

A Film‑Maker Shaped by Intimate Storytelling

Mafile’o cites three films as particularly influential in how she understands and tells stories.

The Wolfpack stands out for her as an example of an intimate documentary that opens up a world viewers would otherwise never reach. That sort of close‑quarters access is a staple of the best sports documentaries, where training grounds, dressing rooms and family spaces are often the only places fans can see athletes as people rather than performers.

She also points to Minding the Gap, praising how it begins with something apparently simple and gradually reveals complex lives, relationships and trauma. That arc mirrors the best long‑form sports storytelling, where a seemingly straightforward season or tour can become a lens on injury, pressure, mental health and family responsibility.

The third key influence she names is The Last of the Mohicans, which she watched repeatedly as a teenager. The near‑wordless relationship between Alice and Uncas, and the emotional impact of the film’s cliff‑edge climax, convinced her that cinema can move people without heavy dialogue. In a sports context, that instinct favours visual storytelling – the silence before a kick, the slow‑motion of a winger accelerating into space, the look on a player’s face as an anthem plays – over extended explanation.

Patience, Process and a New Creative Partnership

Working on LOMU meant collaborating closely with co‑director Gavin Fitzgerald. Mafile’o says the main thing she learned from him was patience. She describes him as calmer and more methodical than she is, in contrast to her own instinct‑ and emotion‑driven style. That partnership reinforced for her the value of slowing down and trusting the process.

For a project centred on a figure as mythologised as Lomu, that balance is significant. The emotional scale of his performances and public profile demands a clear editorial framework: careful verification of stories, sensitive treatment of family material and considered use of archival rugby footage. A methodical approach helps ensure that the film’s most powerful sporting and personal moments land with clarity rather than sentimentality.

Sports Storytelling and the Politics of Funding

Asked what issue will be front of mind when she votes in November, Mafile’o highlights funding for the arts and creative sector. She wants greater recognition of the sector’s cultural, social and economic value and more sustainable investment in the people who actually create the work.

For sports audiences, that position underlines a simple reality: many of the documentaries, series and films that shape our understanding of athletes and competitions are fragile, labour‑intensive projects. They depend on public and private support, and often sit in the same funding pipelines as non‑sports work. When that system is under strain, nuanced coverage of major sporting figures – particularly from under‑represented communities – can struggle to get made or to reach global platforms.

Who Is Seen in Aotearoa’s Sporting Story?

Mafile’o argues that people who are too often underserved or overlooked in Aotearoa deserve more attention, naming in particular people living with disabilities, and Māori and Pasifika communities. She believes there needs to be much closer scrutiny of who is missing out on equal access to opportunities, resources and support, and why.

That lens applies directly to sport. From participation pathways to coaching and leadership, the question of who is visible and who controls the narrative runs through rugby and other codes in New Zealand. Pacific players, for example, have been central to the success of teams across various competitions, but stories about their lives off the field – migration, caregiving, church, education – are still relatively rare in mainstream coverage.

Mafile’o herself is Tongan‑Kiwi and co‑founded the Pacific‑led film‑making collective Malosi Pictures, based in South Auckland. That grounding in Pacific creative networks informs LOMU, placing a globally recognised rugby name inside a much more specific geography and community. It is in these kinds of projects that questions of representation, policy and funding intersect: whose sporting stories get backed, who tells them and how they circulate internationally.

The Person Behind the Camera

Beyond her work, Mafile’o offers a candid look at her own personality and habits.

She nominates her worst character trait as thinking she can do everything herself. She admits to taking on too much and only later realising she lacks the organisation, time or even the skills for some of what she has tried to shoulder. Her default setting is, “It’s fine, I’ll figure it out,” a mindset she says has taken her far but also caused problems. She is working on recognising when to hand tasks to people who actually know what they are doing.

In high‑pressure sports projects with tight schedules and multiple stakeholders, that willingness to delegate is more than a personal growth point – it is a practical necessity. Coordinating rights, archives, contributors and promotional material around a major figure like Lomu requires robust production structures as well as creative vision.

Friendship, Recovery and the Pull of ‘Vertical’ Drama

When it comes to friendships, Mafile’o looks for people who are chill, funny and good for a long yarn. She values people who are easy to be around, who do not take themselves too seriously and who can make her laugh. The ideal friend is someone you can talk “absolute rubbish” with one minute and have a deep conversation with the next, and, above all, someone who shows up when it matters. She is not looking for perfect friends, just real ones.

After a hard day at work, she relaxes by lying in bed and watching “absolute trash”, crime dramas and what she calls vertical dramas – shows designed to be watched on a phone. She adds that she would love to create her own vertical series one day, so, in her words, the viewing is technically research. For now, though, the main criterion is simple: anything that requires zero brain power.

Her taste for short‑form, phone‑first formats is a reminder of how sports storytelling is changing. Clips, reels and vertical edits now accompany longer series and films, becoming a key way younger audiences encounter historic tries, classic matches and the personalities around them.

Books, Embarrassing Moments and the Phone Habit

Mafile’o says she no longer lets herself read books because she becomes completely absorbed and has to finish them. As a result, the last great thing she read was a script – details of which remain “top secret”. The discipline is partly about time management in a career built on long‑term creative projects.

Asked about a memory that lives “rent‑free” in her head, she points to one of the approximately 4,000 embarrassing things she has said. She describes herself as very good at putting her foot in her mouth and saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, with several of those moments replaying themselves in her mind.

The vice she would most like to quit or reduce is her phone use. She would love to be someone who can put a phone down and forget it exists; at present, she says, she is not that person.

Family, Ocean and Time Away From Work

When asked to describe the five elements of her perfect weekend, Mafile’o answers with a simple list: her kids, her family, somewhere near the ocean – preferably in the Islands – good kai and drinks, and absolutely no work.

For a film‑maker operating at the intersection of elite sport and Pacific communities, those preferences speak to the environments and relationships that keep her grounded. They also echo the settings that often sit just off‑screen in rugby: beaches, backyards, church halls and family kitchens where careers are celebrated, negotiated and sometimes challenged.

A Documentary in Cinemas, a Legacy Re‑Examined

LOMU is currently screening nationwide. Built from Mafile’o’s Pacific‑centred approach, her partnership with Gavin Fitzgerald and a set of influences drawn from both documentary and feature cinema, the film revisits one of rugby’s defining figures with fresh emphasis on language, family and community.

For international sports audiences, it offers more than nostalgia. By foregrounding Lomu’s Tongan identity alongside his on‑field dominance, it invites a wider conversation about who shapes the global game, whose stories are elevated and how national and international structures respond when those stories are told from the inside out.