Calici: A Rural Conspiracy

New Zealand 2007 / 24min.
Director Claudia Babirat / Producer Claudia Babirat

Bioterrorists. Ecological anarchists. Those are just some of the names reserved for those who would deliberately introduce a deadly virus across our borders and put New Zealand at risk. But what if those people are among us, the backbone of our nation…?

For decades, the farmers of Central Otago have battled rabbits. Forget Thumper and Peter Rabbit — this is a plague that ravages gardens and pasture, denudes entire landscapes. In the early 1990s there was a brief glimmer of hope — a new Calici virus fatal to rabbits. But when the government denied access of the virus into the country in 1997, a small group of desperate farmers decided to take matters into their own hands, smuggling the virus in from Australia.

In the dead of night, little vials were passed to select recipients, often anonymously. Without fully comprehending the severity of their actions, the farmers began experimenting with lethal concoctions, relying on No. 8 technology to propagate and spread the deadly virus around their land.

Told largely through the words of three of the farmers who spread the virus, Calici: A Rural Conspiracy is a sometimes humorous, sometimes sobering look at what it was like to be part of New Zealand’s biggest-ever back-block conspiracy.

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