Rob Sarkies on his new movie Pike River: ‘We need to tell and retell this story’

Sonya Rockhouse's son Ben and Anna Osborne's husband Milton were among the 29 West Coast coal miners killed by a methane gas explosion at Pike River 15 year ago.

In the following years, the two women banded together and successfully campaigned the government to re-enter the mine and improve health and safety legislation for miners.

"Unless we shout stories like [Rockhouse and and Osborne's] from the rooftops, it’s too easy to lie down and let shit happen to us," Pike River director Rob Sarkies tells Saturday Morning.

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Being involved in production of the Pike River film was validating for Rockhouse and Osborne, Sarkies says, and the women are excited and proud to be at its Sydney Film Festival premiere on Saturday night.

“It's lovely for them to have something in relation to Pike River, which is actually a positive."

When Sarkies first screened an early cut of the film at his house, the two women sat on armchairs in front of him and at the moments when the actors playing them clasped hands, he saw Rockhouse and Osborne do the same.

“It was totally unconscious, but they were so in it. It's like they were living it. They literally reached out and held each other's hands in sync with the actors.

“To be honest, I don't know if tonight's premiere can beat that screening because it was so intimate and so personal and so meaningful for them.”

Watch the Pike River trailer:

In the last 15 years, the Pike River story has become a “collective scar on our consciousness” that has affected the whole of New Zealand, Sarkies says.

“If we just hide that away and don't explore it and don't tell it and retell it, it festers, I think, like a cultural cancer, if you will.”

To him, Rockhouse and Osborne are heroes for standing up and demonstrating that taking action can effect real change.

“It's inspiring to me to see two figures who were prepared to fight on their own terms, in their own way and be completely authentic in doing so."

When actors Robyn Malcolm and Melanie Lynskey first met Rockhouse and Osborne, they were even more nervous than the women they were playing, Sarkies says, but it was a very special moment.

“I just stood back and watched four amazing women connect, and that connection stayed to this day.”

While directors often test the chemistry between actors, there’s an understanding that big stars like Malcolm and Lynskey are skilled and experienced enough to find their own chemistry, Sarkies says.

Happily for the film, the two women had an instant connection and a similarly deep passion to do justice to Rockhouse and Osborne's story.

Both strong, funny and "beautiful spirits", Malcolm is "like the mum you'd want", Sarkies says, while Lynskey is quiet, polite and very clear-headed, and the dynamic between them worked a real charm.

"They got matching tattoos at the end, which shows this was not just another film for both of them."

Pike River will have a nationwide cinematic release later this year.