Tatau follows Kyle and Budgie, two twenty-something friends from London that set off to travel the world. Ahead of the journey, Kyle gets a Maori-style tattoo to celebrate their eventual destination: the Cook Islands. When snorkeling in a lagoon, Kyle finds the dead body of a local girl, Aumea, tied up underwater. Returning to the lagoon with the police, Kyle finds her corpse has disappeared. But Kyle knows what he saw. Desperate to uncover what happened, Kyle and Budgie find themselves sucked deeper and deeper into a world of Maori myths, symbols, and hallucinatory visions... until finally the full meaning of Kyle’s tattoo is revealed.
This film focuses on the links between Maori tattoo artists from New Zealand (James Webster, Juliee Paama Penguely, Moko de la Terre) and those from French Polynesia (Roonui Anania, Chimé, Laurent Purotu). With interventions by specialists Sébastien Galliot and Michael Koch.
Chronicle of the first tattoo festival which was held at the end of March and beginning of April 2017 at the town hall of Faa'a in Tahiti. With Moana Heitaa, Pai Aritai, Patu, Tuatini Tamata, Tana Tokoragi, Estelle Anania miss Ink Girl France 2017 godmother of the festival and around fifteen young tattoo artists for whom it was the first festival.
