In Conversation With Edward Sampson

Sarah Daniell: The thing that struck me first was the commentary around a horse’s ability to sense what humans are feeling, their deep intelligence and connectedness to emotion and to the soldiers who rode them. I couldn’t help but think if horses can sense so much about us, what we feel, our intentions, why don’t they just run for the hills? Get out. 

Edward Sampson: It’s funny because [historian] Aaron Fox made an interesting quote. He said that the horse trusts you, the rider, and goes into battle with you. That horse doesn’t know it’s going to get shot, but will follow you into battle all the way. The horse is a flightless animal. Generally, if it’s in danger it runs away from it. But in this scenario – and the same goes throughout the history of horses in any battles for the last 5,000 years – the horse goes into battle because they trust that rider.

SD: The other really beautiful thing I noticed was that soldiers cared for their horses first –  water, food, brushing them down, cleaning them – before they ever got to do any of that for themselves. They were the priority. And that was the official military line, too. 

ES: And it makes logical sense because without the horse you don’t have anything in that terrain because vehicles in those days weren’t that great – we’re just at the beginning of the industrial area of the car coming in and the First World War tank that came in… and the tanks weren’t that great or maybe they didn’t understand the power of the tank or technology. I didn’t put it in the doco but the British did use gas in Sinai-Palestine. But the dumbasses forgot about the wind direction and the wind and came back on them. 

SD: The British do not bathe themselves in glory in strategy or decisions in that campaign – and that comes at a cost to their allies – that’s clear in the documentary. But what made you decide to make a film about New Zealand’s mounted cavalry?

ES: Because I love history and I believe history should be told truthfully, to take an even balance of the story. My partner on the project is co-director Terry Kingi. He’s about 73 and his great-granddad was in the Canterbury mounted rifle regiment and that’s how I got sucked into the story. Originally we’re trying to make it into a feature drama but we thought that’s never going to work. So it ended up as a docu-drama.

SD: It’s as much a film about war, horses and connection as it is about mental health. The dramatised elements of the film are so powerful and devastating, often ending in alcoholism, suicide. Where did you get the horses to represent this connection and tell the story of the fallout?

ES: Terry runs a rehab program with horses – that’s where the horses all came from and the rehab program is for men with wellbeing or mental health  issues. The success rate of that is about 80 percent with the horses. It’s quite important to put that out there. 

With the suicide scenes, we have to do it in a subtle way that respects for our forefathers and our mothers who were in the battles that it’s also at the same time it’s a political message to the government, and the New Zealand government hasn’t done anything in over 100 years.

SD: You mean in terms of acknowledgement, or reparation?

ES: All about this. That’s another story in itself but there’s no records. So I did that respectfully.

SD: It was five years in the making and it features really terrific – and at times really grim and devastating – interviews with 14 subjects across Aotearoa, Australia, and Turkey – descendants, historians, and others with personal connections to the events.

ES: Basically when you interview somebody it’s all about networking – they say have you tried this person or that person? So it’s all these little connections in New Zealand and also I also was fascinated by the Turkish side of the story. It’s a forgotten campaign. The big difference between the Western Front and the Sinai-Palestine campaign, apart from desert and the long distances between the battles, is that the soldiers had horses and they came as their companions. And as [NZ film and TV producer] Steven O’Meagher said to me … ‘we want to go straight on the horses because people love animals more than people’. In some European countries they ban horses being by themselves – a horse has to have another horse with it… because they require companionship.

SD: You use amazing archival footage, personal diaries. A lot of letters, diaries. There was a lot of material that was censored by the government at that time for PR reasons.

ES: There was a lot more information from the Western Front side of the battle compared to the Sinai because the Sinai-Palestine campaign was more of a confidential military campaign … they were the forerunners for the SAS, from what I’ve been told. The guys would go 40 miles into enemy territory, bomb the railway tracks then come back out and the Turkish never saw them – that’s where the term ‘devils on horses’ came from.

SD: The soldiers, returning, suffered unimaginably in the war then after – because the horses that travelled to Europe from New Zealand were left behind, sold to European countries. They had to leave their trusted companions behind – and the impact of that on their mental health was wildly underestimated and ignored?

ES: As [military historian] Chris Pugsley said in the film, you didn’t want to be seen as coming home and being unwell because society will not accept you. Hopefully we’ve changed for the better 120 years later. But yeah, one in five people now suffer from mental health issues.

SD: As you point out in the documentary it’s inter-generational?

ES: It was also part of the British ‘stiff upper lip’. Get on with it. An interesting thing is that New Zealand was governed by British law. Australia wasn’t and ignored British law. I can’t remember off the top of my head but we lost a few men who went AWOL, who were trying to escape the war but they were shellshocked and under British law you were shot for that. They were executed. Whereas Australia turned around and said ‘no you’re not governing our troops,  we’re governing ourselves’. When it came to the Second World War New Zealand said, ‘no we’re governing our own troops’. We were the only country in the First World War that sent full divisions. And that’s when compulsory service came in 1917. Australia never did it.

SD: Why? Do you think they have more political guts? A stronger sense of their own sovereignty?

ES: My dad’s Australian so I can say this. Maybe because they were a bunch of convicts and they’ve got that mentality to say fuck off to the British Empire, whereas the government in New Zealand’s like okay we’ll give you everything. That’s my theory.

SD: The film is a bleak reminder of the real cost of war.

ES: The real cost is to society and to the families but also a financial cost. So we mentioned New Zealand sent a warship. The ship got scrapped after the First World War, but New Zealand was still paying it off 10 years later. Go figure that one out. 

SD: Where did you find the actors? The lead looks like Val Kilmer.

ES: None of them are actors. They’re from the rehab programme. But the reason they come across really great on screen is because they have that really good relationship with the horse. They love those horses and you see it in their eyes. It comes across quite naturally. I cast my daughter into the film, Sophie in the blue dress. She’s in her last year of St. Kents and guess what she wants to do? Film. 

SD: She’s a natural – composed. What can we learn from this in a kind of collective lesson, but also what did you learn personally from this experience? 

ES: I never thought about that. The journey has been meeting different people here and also abroad. That’s been the thing. I shot 30 hours of footage of interviews and you try to break it down and go, ‘that’s really interesting. I didn’t know about that.’ I didn’t know that the First World War was the beginning of the passport – because prior to that, under the Ottoman Empire, anybody could move in and out of different countries but it was after the First World War when the Brits came in and carved it all up  – that’s where the conflict started kicking in.

SD: And one of the doco subjects says this war – like all wars – was about three letters ‘O. I. L’. 

ES: Oil. That’s right. And the other thing is war is actually fought for what’s underneath the land. Ukraine’s a classic example. Rich in resources. 

SD: Has it made you more angry about war?

ES: There’s no victory in war. You either win or lose, but you still lose. It costs you financially and it costs you people. To be honest, I don’t care what they say, but no soldier wants to be on the battle line. They’d rather be at home with their families, but they’re forced to be there due to the leaders making stupid decisions.

SD: What films or documentaries have inspired you?

ES: While working on The Story of Rugby TV series, I learned about story beats from Steven O’Meagher—an approach that keeps the audience engaged and helps shape a clear narrative arc. I’ve always appreciated the power of documentaries, especially the high standard set by platforms like Netflix. Churchill at War and Wyatt Earp and the Cowboys were particularly compelling. With Devils on Horses, one of the key creative decisions was to integrate music and sound design as narrative tools. They not only help drive the pacing but also enhance the emotional impact of the visuals. One documentary that’s always stuck in my mind was The World at War, a British documentary series narrated by Laurence Oliver that ITV produced in the 1970s and it still holds up today.

SD: Where did you grow up – and were you encouraged to watch films?

ES: I grew up in the 80s in Ruakaka, a small town in Northland, where the closest cinemas were in Whangārei. American TV shows heavily influenced me, as we had only two channels and audio cassettes to record our favourite songs from the radio station once the DJ stopped listening to the sound of his voice. Back then, you’d head down to the local video store to rent a VHS copy of your favourite film. If we’d had access to today’s technology back then, I would have loved it. I first learned to edit using film aged 12, working with a Super 8mm camera and a small editing desk that I saved up to buy from the paper run.

At the time, I resisted the shift to video, because I felt it lacked the texture and visual quality of film – VCR. Things have changed dramatically. Now, you can shoot, edit, and even distribute a movie entirely on your iPhone. The filmmakers who shaped my creative outlook were Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and Sir David Lean — especially inspiring, given Lean’s background in editing. Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia is one of the best films ever made.

SD: Who do you hope sees this film?

ES: During the workshop, one person asked an important question: ‘What’s your kaupapa, and who are you speaking to in this film?’ After some thought, I realised I was making the film for my daughter, representing Generation Z or even Alpha, and that helped frame the perspective I’ve taken. Hopefully, that generation will learn something new.

Edward Sampson is an editor, producer and director whose credits include I’m Not Harry Jenson (produced with James Napier Robertson and Tom Hern), Crackheads (Best Self-Funded Feature at the NZ Film Awards), and Turn of the Screw (2020), which screened internationally. He was associate producer on The Story of Rugby, the six-part doco series directed by Steven O’Meagher.

Devils on Horses screens in Auckland cinemas June 25, at Bridgeway Cinema and Sat 28 June at The Capitol and heads to Christchurch, Wellington, and nationwide.

For a full programme visit: docedge.nz