The 2005 discovery of a cannonball, buried for 138 years in a paddock, throws Waimate into turmoil. It is all the Maori locals need to confirm their long-held belief that they were forcibly removed from their tribal lands, in a bloody 1866 battle. The hotly contested claim eventually ends up in the District Court and on the lens of cameraman Dave who captures all the arguments, frauds and forgeries of the townspeople, in a cinema verité mockumentary style.

The Waimate Conspiracy

A small town, on State Highway 1, where nothing ever happens...then Rex Devlin dies in a suspicious car wreck and a mysterious stranger moves into the Temuka Hotel. Why is one of the world's biggest multinational corporations so desperate to buy a dowdy little backwater petrol station? Has Oscar Devlin really come all the way home from Los Angeles to sort out his meager inheritance, or is it Frankie he's come to see?