I ONLY have five words to say about Niki Caro's award-winning rites-of-passage drama: you must see this film.

Laden with awards on the festival circuit, including the audience prizes at the Sundance and Rotterdam film festivals, Whale Rider is a magical fable concerning a myth embedded deep within New Zealand culture.

Pai (Keisha Castle-Hughes) is a 12-year-old Maori girl who has never been accepted by her family, always living in the shadow of her dead twin brother, who, according to legend, was to become chief of her tribe.

Ostracised by her grandfather, Koro (Rawiri Paratene), Pai watches as he searches for a new leader amongst the sons of the other villagers, ignoring her simply because she is a girl. As the candidates fall by the wayside, Pai emerges as the one person in the village with all the necessary attributes to lead her people.

Aided by her feisty grandmother (Vicky Haughton), Pai must stand up to a thousand years of tradition to prove to Koro that she is the true way forward.

Whale Rider is an astonishing journey into the heart and soul of a community governed by ritual. Director Niki Caro brings out the unspoiled yet rugged beauty of the New Zealand coast, which provides a haunting backdrop to the raging emotions of Pai as she struggles to prove herself to Koro.

Newcomer Castle-Hughes is simply mesmerising, delivering the kind of intense and natural performance that should make her a front-runner for next year's Oscars.

The scene in which she chokes back floods of tears at school assembly to dedicate an award to Koro, the one person missing from the audience of proud parents, is heartbreaking. Paratene inspires fear and pity as the village elder who refuses to move with the times and Haughton radiates warmth as the grandmother who conspires with Pai to make her husband see the error of his ways.

The underwater photography sequences of the whales are just gorgeous, and there won't be a dry eye in the house for the startling ending when Pai makes the ultimate sacrifice for her people.

Whale Rider reminds you that life is a great and mysterious adventure - embrace it.

See it at Lighthouse