The Dark Horse

Set in a small northeastern New Zealand city, James Napier Robertson’s moving, tenderly wrought film draws on the real-life story of Genesis Potini, a onetime national speed-chess champion of Maori descent, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, who used his talents to work with underserved children in his community. Genesis (Cliff Curtis, Whale Rider) gets released from a psychiatric facility into the rough, reluctant care of his older brother, Ariki (Wayne Hapi), a member of a local gang. He forms a tentative connection with his teenage nephew, Mana (James Rolleston, Boy), who faces an imminent, and brutal, initiation into his father’s way of life. When Genesis begins volunteering at a youth chess club that serves as a community center and sanctuary for a ragged assortment of local kids, he instills in them his vision, interwoven with characters from Maori folklore, of the chessboard and its pieces as an expansive, vigilant family with room in it for everyone who plays. As the group of youths and volunteers coalesce into a sort of surrogate family as well, its growing appeal for Mana sparks a tension at home, threatening his own safety and Genesis’s fragile psychological equilibrium. —Lynn Rapoport