Three friends who spent more than three months paddling, tramping, and fishing through one of New Zealand's most isolated regions have returned with a documentary that has just claimed a major award at this year's Mountain Film Festival.
Dan Sutherland, Ethan Roadley, and Daymon Nuhaj headed into the Fiordland backcountry in autumn 2024 with no plan and no grid to fall back on. Over 100 days, they moved through the wilderness by sea kayak and whitewater kayak as well as on foot, catching their own food and filming throughout.
"We had no real plan. The plan was no plan," Sutherland told RNZ's Nine to Noon.
That footage eventually became 100 Days in Fiordland, which won the Best New Zealand Made Film Award at this year's Mountain Film Festival. Once the kayaks were in position, Sutherland says the group took each day as it came.
The journey nearly came apart before it had properly begun. Setting out from Lake Hauroko, the three ran the Wairaurāhiri River down to the coast, where the ocean was far from welcoming. Sutherland described conditions at the river mouth as "sub-optimal."
"We had to kind of punch out the river mouth bar at the Wairaurāhiri and it was quite punchy surf and so getting out of there we kind of got hammered a little bit."
Getting through the surf was only the start. An eight-hour sea kayak crossing into a 20-knot headwind lay ahead. Sutherland had accumulated years of kayaking experience in New Zealand and overseas, but sea kayaking was largely unfamiliar territory, and his body registered every kilometre.
"I was flattened, like my legs were jelly getting out just because I hadn't used them, my arms were cooked… that was probably one of the hardest physical days I've ever had."
With that level of physical output becoming routine, keeping enough food on hand was a constant preoccupation. Blue cod proved the dependable staple, turning up reliably on the line day after day.
"We didn't get a crazy amount of crayfish but a lot of blue cod, we had pretty much blue cod every day."
In the early weeks, the team burned through their supplies far faster than they should have, and the consequences were memorable for all the wrong reasons.
"We ran out of everything and then we just had salt and blue cod and it was like, oh this is pretty average but it's not too bad, then we ran out of salt… this is actually quite grim - like saltless fish is not that great as it turns out."
After the next resupply drop, they kept a much tighter rein on the rations.
"We got a bit excited in the first month I think just kind of smashed all our food reserves but definitely when you have to go out fishing even if it's raining and whatnot and cooking over the fire there's something pretty, pretty cool about it."
The film carries a grief that reaches beyond the physical demands of the expedition. After the journey ended, Nuhaj died in a kayaking accident on the Milford Sound, and editing the documentary, with its hours of footage featuring his friend, became an ordeal Sutherland struggled to push through.
"That kind of killed the motivation for staring at endless hours of well just him and the whole trip and everything and I just didn't really know what I was making anymore."
He completed it anyway, and the process left him with a sharper view of what it takes to tackle difficult things.
"Just committing to doing it seems to be the hardest part and then if you go and get amongst it, day to day it's often not that bad or maybe hour to hour. That was one thing, and it still annoys me now, after going through that…like just go do more hard things."
The Mountain Film and Book Festival runs from 19 June to 26 June across Wanaka and Queenstown, with an online programme available from 24 June through to 31 July.
