Directed by Clare Burgess. Available free on RNZ website.

A tribute to much-loved children’s writer Joy Cowley, Joy, Full and Fearless is one of several excellent Kiwi biopics that have come out this year, including films about politician Jacinda Ardern (see TM, November 2025), artist Robin White and musician Don McGlashan. We seem to be finding the confidence to celebrate our national icons without fretting whether some poppies might have grown taller than others.

Joy started life as a tender plant in stony ground, her family life blighted by poverty, mental illness and often moving house — she attended five schools before she was nine. Living with a mother with schizophrenia, Joy took shelter in books, remaking her and her young sisters’ lives in story. “In books, kids can do anything.” Family life is a strong thread in the film, and her tumultuous early years were followed by a shotgun wedding that ended in pain and hurt and a suicide attempt; then a marriage to Malcolm, a thoroughly decent man who died of cancer; and a final, loving, marriage to her parish priest, Terry Coles, who died in 2022.

During these turbulent decades, Joy was immensely productive, both as a children’s author and a short-story writer and novelist for adults. She has written hundreds of children’s books and her early readers are found in 70 per cent of schools in the US. She values her relationships with others in her industry including fellow children’s author Margaret Mahy, publisher Wendy Pye and artists like Robyn Belton, who notes that Joy was one of the first writers to promote equal recognition for illustrators in children’s publishing in New Zealand.

Joy speaks to camera throughout the film, sharing her thoughts directly. This allows us to see her at first hand as a woman who is unpretentious, wise, compassionate and spiritual. The place of calm and peace she now occupies is the fruit of years of struggle. For a person who has lost most of her sight, she sees farther than most of us. Although it’s not mentioned in the film, Joy is carrying on the work she started in her retreat centre in the Marlborough Sounds by offering mini retreats in the Ignatian tradition from her new home in Dunedin.

As her journey winds towards its destination, Joy asks the question we will all need to ask ourselves: Where does the river end and the sea begin?

Watch: Joy: Full and Fearless

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 310 December 2025: 28