Despite some critical reviews at the Berlin Film Festival, Hollywood actor Temuera Morrison says his latest movie ‘Mahana' is some of the greatest work he has done.

Lee Tamahori's adaptation of Witi Ihimaera's 1994 novel Bulibasha: King of the Gypsies has debuted (under the alternative title of The Patriarch) at the Berlin Film Festival to less than enthusiastic notices.

Temuera Morrison is proud of his latest film.

When SunLive caught up with Temuera on the film set for a new pilot TV series – being filmed in his home town of Rotorua - he says he is proud of the work the cast and crew produced.

Two decades has passed since Temuera and Lee last worked together on the film Once Were Warriors, but the actor says it was easy to get back into working with the director.

'It's been 20 years and it was kind of something getting back together. It's kind of familiar it just went like that. We just gelled for some reason.

'I loved it, I kind of just thought (Lee) has been away for 20 years he may have learnt something by now,” Temuera jokes.

Temuera spent time with both Witi and Lee to make sure he had his character in sync with the 1960's era.

'I had a big role, I was playing the patriarch, so I had to wear the hat convincingly. I had to sit in the saddle convincingly. That takes time and a bit of homework.

'I got stuck in and, along with working with Witi and the other wonderful cast and again, letting Lee do his shaping and his sculpting. We worked together it was a collaboration.”

Although Temuera says it's some of the best work he has produced, film critics have been less than favourable about Lee Tamahori's creation.

Describing it as a 1960s-set soap-opera, Screen Daily's Wendy Ide wrote that 'Lee's overblown Maori pot-boiler could double as feature-length travel advertisement for the verdant beauty of rural New Zealand”.

'While the child protagonist and a decorative garnish of magical realism made Whale Rider a viewing option for a family audience, Mahana combines a lack of storytelling sophistication which will be off-putting for adult viewers, with some thematic elements…which make it unsuitable for children. As such, it's difficult to work out at whom the picture is targeted. Commercial prospects outside of New Zealand would seem limited.”

Tagging the film as 'Once Were Sheep Shearers” (in reference to Lee's groundbreaking 1994 Kiwi film Once Were Warriors), The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney wrote that 'a lot of conflicting impulses are at play in this boldly old-fashioned family saga”

'It's been a long time since anyone attempted to get an audience's pulse racing by pumping up the excitement and rivalry of a local sheep-shearing contest.”

Rooney also took issue with John Collee's (Master and Commander) script, claiming that the 'on-the-nose dialogue, ripe melodrama and pre-programmed emotional responses will test all but the most forgiving viewers”.

Variety's Peter Debruge was more positive, describing the film as a sincere homage to Lee's homeland that 'blends incredible cultural specificity with the director's internationally accessible storytelling style”.

'Though adults may find it too simplistic or predictable in parts, the movie offers no shortage of local colour to compensate – from widescreen views of rolling green hills (lensed outside Auckland, which doubles for the country's East coast) to the forms of labour that marked the end of the Maori's rural way of life, even after many had moved to urban areas.”

Starring Temuera Morrison, Jim Moriarty and Nancy Brunning, Mahana is scheduled to open in New Zealand on March 3.

Additional reporting Stuff.co.nz