When Natalie Malcon made Heaven and Hell – The Centrepoint Story, her devastating award-winning 2021 documentary about the survivors of sexual abuse at the rural Auckland commune led by Bert Potter, she had already considered her next cult hit.
It was Gloriavale. As a stern, strict fundamentalist Christian community in the West Coast wilderness, it might seem on a different spectrum to Potter’s semisuburban free-love hippy fiefdom. But Malcon came to see the parallels.
“Making was the first time that I really got a deeper understanding of how these communities run, how they recruit people and what it’s like
