Marie Wawa

Marie Wawa is a ni-Vanuatu actress and villager who starred in the 2015 Australian-Vanuatuan film, Tanna. The film, which was the first to be shot entirely in Vanuatu, won two major prizes at the 2015 Venice Film Festival and was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards in 2017. Wawa appears in the lead role opposite Mungau Dain as two star-crossed lovers.

Wawa is from the interior village of Yakel on Tanna island, Tafea Province, in southern Vanuatu.

Wawa, like the rest of the cast of Tanna, was a novice, first-time actress with no experience prior to her casting. Wawa was cast in the lead role of Wawa, a young girl who is betrothed in an arranged marriage as part of a peace deal with another tribe. However, she falls in love with the grandson of her chief, played by Mungau Dain. The couple flee and eventually commit suicide, mirroring the true real-life tragedy of a Tannese couple in 1987.