Disney’s live-action remake of Moana perfectly shows off the beauty and unspoilt nature of French Polynesia
Ed Grenby - 13 July 2026
Disney’s live-action remake of Moana perfectly shows off the beauty and unspoilt nature of French Polynesia
Why, you might ask, does the world need a live-action version of Disney’s Moana?
Well here’s one answer: it’s so everyone can see how amazing French Polynesia is – because if you saw the country in a promotional video from the tourist board, you’d think it was all CGI.
In fact Moana, which opens in cinemas this week, was filmed across multiple South Pacific locations (including Hawaii). But arguably the movie’s most striking backdrops are those in French Polynesia, the string of 121 islands, outcrops and atolls that stretches across 2,000km of the most startlingly aquamarine waters you’ve ever seen. It’s this remote archipelago that inspired the Moana story in the first place.
Tahiti, its “capital” island, is these days a bit of a Hawaii itself, with big hotel chains and big Americans frequenting them – but just a boat ride away are the Marquesas, a chain of islets so remote that there’s only really one way of getting to them: on board the Aranui 5 (aranui.com), a cargo ship that carries a handful of cruise passengers, too.
Which is why I am here being unloaded ashore on the island of Hiva Oa – alongside 20 crates of Heineken.
What I see before me is pure Moana.
In the local language, the Marquesas are called “the islands of men”, but I’ve rarely seen a landscape that shows less evidence of human existence. Sheer volcanic mountains erupt from the ocean and seem to keep going until they reach the very clouds, while every even remotely horizontal surface is carpeted in jungle so deep and rich it’s hard to believe anyone’s ever entered it.
Villages occupy tiny scraps of land between cliffs and sea, looking less as though they were built there than reluctantly permitted to remain by the indifferent local gods.
None of the Marquesas’ dozen lumps of lava has more than a couple of thousand inhabitants, and boy, are they pleased to see you (or at least the Heineken you bring with you).
So for eight days, we criss-cross between them, and each morning the ship either docks or sends passengers ashore in 30-man whaleboats after breakfast, so the crew can get on with the more-important freight.
Our on-land itineraries are made up of guided hikes, unguided pottering, museum tours (Paul Gauguin and Jacques Brel are both buried on Hiva Oa and memorialised with cultural centres), craft demonstrations and beach time.
The most interesting excursions are to the me’ae, the ancient pre-Christian holy places. There’s usually not much left of them – perhaps a couple of crumbling tiki, scaled-down versions of the Easter Island sculptures – but they seem to retain some unworldly atmosphere.
That, the ancients would tell you, is the site’s mana, the supernatural spirit that binds everything together but is extra strong in certain places and objects.
Perhaps it’s just the hazy dappled sunlight, the heavy breadfruit-scented air, the creeping tendrils of vegetation reclaiming the clearing, or the seeping silence; or perhaps it’s the knowledge that people were once sacrificed on this spot – but whatever the cause, a strange stillness pervades.
At one point, our guide warns us not to tread on the stones, and a hush falls.
“Will it anger the gods?” whispers one of our party.
“No,” explains the guide. “It’s just a bit loose, and I don’t want you to slip.”
There were a few occasions, it has to be said, when it felt like the day’s activities had been arranged simply with the aim of getting us out the way while the ship unloaded (the 10-mile hike on Fatu Hiva, for instance, gave views of some true land-that-time-forgot valleys, but was a five hours’ slog). But it’s precisely the way you wash up on these islands – as part of the fabric of life, along with the coffee and the cola and the bacon and the beer – that makes the trip special.
With no tourist infrastructure (and no real “attractions” or cruise-ship-style entertainment), you experience the islands unfiltered.
You notice the way children learn to ride horses at the same age they learn to ride bicycles. You hear choir practice drifting from churches. You watch fishermen go through whole packs of cigarettes without moving.
And because the islands aren’t arranged around tourism, interactions feel different, too.
One afternoon we find ourselves on a beach at Hatiheu on Nuku Hiva, all chocolate-coloured sand, leaning palms and turquoise water. It’s every bit as gorgeous as a South Seas beach is contractually obliged to be; yet the thing everyone talks about afterwards isn’t the scenery. It’s the fact we’re sharing it with local families.
Nobody appears offering jet-ski rentals, and nobody asks if we’d like another cocktail.
Instead, it’s just a beach – which might sound like faint praise until you realise how rare it has become.
The Aranui 5 doesn’t carry tourists to a carefully stage-managed version of Polynesia. It simply allows them to hitch a lift through the real thing.
And in a world where even the most remote corners of the globe increasingly come gift-wrapped for visitors, that feels a rare privilege.
Why, you might ask, does the world need a live-action version of Disney’s Moana?
Well here’s one answer: it’s so everyone can see how amazing French Polynesia is – because if you saw the country in a promotional video from the tourist board, you’d think it was all CGI.
In fact Moana, which opens in cinemas this week, was filmed across multiple South Pacific locations (including Hawaii). But arguably the movie’s most striking backdrops are those in French Polynesia, the string of 121 islands, outcrops and atolls that stretches across 2,000km of the most startlingly aquamarine waters you’ve ever seen. It’s this remote archipelago that inspired the Moana story in the first place.
Tahiti, its “capital” island, is these days a bit of a Hawaii itself, with big hotel chains and big Americans frequenting them – but just a boat ride away are the Marquesas, a chain of islets so remote that there’s only really one way of getting to them: on board the Aranui 5 (aranui.com), a cargo ship that carries a handful of cruise passengers, too.
Which is why I am here being unloaded ashore on the island of Hiva Oa – alongside 20 crates of Heineken.
What I see before me is pure Moana.
In the local language, the Marquesas are called “the islands of men”, but I’ve rarely seen a landscape that shows less evidence of human existence. Sheer volcanic mountains erupt from the ocean and seem to keep going until they reach the very clouds, while every even remotely horizontal surface is carpeted in jungle so deep and rich it’s hard to believe anyone’s ever entered it.
Villages occupy tiny scraps of land between cliffs and sea, looking less as though they were built there than reluctantly permitted to remain by the indifferent local gods.
None of the Marquesas’ dozen lumps of lava has more than a couple of thousand inhabitants, and boy, are they pleased to see you (or at least the Heineken you bring with you).
So for eight days, we criss-cross between them, and each morning the ship either docks or sends passengers ashore in 30-man whaleboats after breakfast, so the crew can get on with the more-important freight.
Our on-land itineraries are made up of guided hikes, unguided pottering, museum tours (Paul Gauguin and Jacques Brel are both buried on Hiva Oa and memorialised with cultural centres), craft demonstrations and beach time.
The most interesting excursions are to the me’ae, the ancient pre-Christian holy places. There’s usually not much left of them – perhaps a couple of crumbling tiki, scaled-down versions of the Easter Island sculptures – but they seem to retain some unworldly atmosphere.
That, the ancients would tell you, is the site’s mana, the supernatural spirit that binds everything together but is extra strong in certain places and objects.
Perhaps it’s just the hazy dappled sunlight, the heavy breadfruit-scented air, the creeping tendrils of vegetation reclaiming the clearing, or the seeping silence; or perhaps it’s the knowledge that people were once sacrificed on this spot – but whatever the cause, a strange stillness pervades.
At one point, our guide warns us not to tread on the stones, and a hush falls.
“Will it anger the gods?” whispers one of our party.
“No,” explains the guide. “It’s just a bit loose, and I don’t want you to slip.”
There were a few occasions, it has to be said, when it felt like the day’s activities had been arranged simply with the aim of getting us out the way while the ship unloaded (the 10-mile hike on Fatu Hiva, for instance, gave views of some true land-that-time-forgot valleys, but was a five hours’ slog). But it’s precisely the way you wash up on these islands – as part of the fabric of life, along with the coffee and the cola and the bacon and the beer – that makes the trip special.
With no tourist infrastructure (and no real “attractions” or cruise-ship-style entertainment), you experience the islands unfiltered.
You notice the way children learn to ride horses at the same age they learn to ride bicycles. You hear choir practice drifting from churches. You watch fishermen go through whole packs of cigarettes without moving.
And because the islands aren’t arranged around tourism, interactions feel different, too.
One afternoon we find ourselves on a beach at Hatiheu on Nuku Hiva, all chocolate-coloured sand, leaning palms and turquoise water. It’s every bit as gorgeous as a South Seas beach is contractually obliged to be; yet the thing everyone talks about afterwards isn’t the scenery. It’s the fact we’re sharing it with local families.
Nobody appears offering jet-ski rentals, and nobody asks if we’d like another cocktail.
Instead, it’s just a beach – which might sound like faint praise until you realise how rare it has become.
The Aranui 5 doesn’t carry tourists to a carefully stage-managed version of Polynesia. It simply allows them to hitch a lift through the real thing.
And in a world where even the most remote corners of the globe increasingly come gift-wrapped for visitors, that feels a rare privilege.
Moana is in UK cinemas from 10 July.2026