It’s 1953. Bob Blair and 19 year-old Nerissa Love are deeply in love. Their love story alone is the stuff of movies, but what makes Bob and Nerissa’s story one of legends is that catastrophic events will cause their private love story to play out its final scene on an unlikely public stage.

While Bob goes off to represent New Zealand at cricket in South Africa, Nerissa makes a fateful decision to travel to Auckland to be with her friend for Christmas. While Bob smashes wickets in Johannesburg, the train Nerissa is on heads straight for a bridge that spans the Whangaehu River – a place better known to most New Zealanders as Tangiwai.

The Tangiwai disaster remains one of our most heart-wrenching and powerful New Zealand stories. Tangiwai explores a national tragedy through the eyes of two young people who embody all the hope of the post-war generation, a generation who were desperate to forge a new, independent path for their nation.