Tanna 2016

On the island of Tanna, communities guided by Kastom uphold arranged marriages as a cornerstone of social order. The people of Kastom Road face sporadic conflicts with the Imedin tribe, while two adherents of Kastom, Dain and Wawa, maintain a secret love affair. Wawa’s young sister Selin is impudent, stealing a penis sheath and fleeing into the wilderness, punished for entering a forbidden zone where the Imedin once massacred their people. To teach Selin respect, her grandfather — the tribe’s shaman — takes her to the spiritual site of Yahul and the volcanoes. At the sacred ground, the Imedin attack the shaman, clubbing him and leaving him mortally wounded. Selin escapes and returns to her people, who fear that his impending death will leave them vulnerable. The Imedin are summoned to the village to broker peace. They trade pigs, which the shaman’s murderers club to death just as they had the shaman, and Wawa is promised for marriage into the Imedin tribe.

Despite the arranged marriage, Wawa and Dain press on with their affair. The elders learn of this and plead with Wawa to give up the relationship. The elder women empathize with Wawa’s burden, acknowledging the strain of an arranged marriage, but insist that respecting one’s elders and the law will lead to happiness. Her peers remind her that she is not the only one whose fate is at stake; if the Imedin lose Wawa as a promised bride, revenge could follow. Wawa reveals that she has already had sex with Dain, meaning she will be unacceptable to the Imedin anyway. Disgraced, Dain is exiled from the village. The elders continue to urge Wawa to accept her arranged marriage, pointing to Prince Philip as an example that arranged marriages can be intertwined with love.

Wawa then joins Dain in the wilderness, hiding on the side of the volcano while both their people and the Imedin search for them. The couple consumes poison mushrooms, and their people come to bury them. In the end, the elders reach a stark conclusion: the recognition of love-based marriage must be added to Kastom to keep their culture alive.