Where Is the Real Te Fiti Island?

2016’s Moana is one of the most beloved Disney films of the 2010s thanks to its catchy songs, well-formed characters, thrilling story, and lush environments. Said environments are our main focus today, as we’ll be looking at the true real world inspirations behind the film’s islands, including Te Fiti and Motunui.

The initial setting of Moana is Motunui — home of Moana and her family — a volcanic island shown in the film to feature sandy white beaches, lagoons, mountains, and an entire ecosystem of gorgeous plant life.

While there is no real island of Motunui — the name has its origin in the Maori language — the production team behind the film went out of their way to craft a realistic Polynesian environment. One of the film’s art directors, Andy Harkness, said in around the time of its release that, “We wanted to make sure it felt like the South Pacific and the world we saw when we visited.”

Production designer Ian Gooding commented further, adding that while the island was not based specifically on a real place, “… they’re based on real areas at real times. [To replicate] costumes, boats, houses, and tattoos, we had most of the information from Samoa, so that ended up being Motunui, the fictional island where Moana is from.”

Much of Motunui’s physical design features came from a melding of various real islands the Moana production team visited. These included Samoa, Tutuila, Tetiꞌaroa, and the private island of Tetiaroa — home to the well-known Brando hotel — an atoll whose enclosed lagoon proved a particular inspiration to Motunui’s thematic design in the film. In addition, the island’s main geographic feature is based on Mount Otemanu on Bora Bora.

Moana’s other major setting is the mythical island of Te Fiti, home of the entity of the same name who “used her life-giving heart to spread the gift of life across the world, creating multiple islands inhabited by flora, fauna, and humans” and then “laid herself to rest and formed her body into an island.”

Te Fiti’s appearance was based on the real island of Tahiti, with its reefs, forests, and lagoons in particular taking heavy inspiration from the main Tahitian island. In the same interview quoted above, Harkness further broke down how the real colors of Tahiti inspired the film’s visual aesthetic, saying “There’s color you see when you’re there, there’s color in photographs, and there’s color you remember. It’s about the impressions, and what you feel when you visit the place.”

It’s worth noting that it wasn’t only the film’s environments that were inspired by and adapted from true Polynesian cultures. Both the real legend of Maui and the historically accurate concept of the “Long Pause” — a roughly 1,000 year period where Polynesians stopped exploring and then began again, both for reasons that continue to mystify archeologists to this day — are synthesized into the film’s plot. Furthermore, everything from the design of the Moana’s ship to Maui’s tattoos are based on real, intricately detailed counterparts in the Polynesian world.

Art director Bill Schwab explained at the time of the film’s release, “It’s a beautiful place with beautiful people… We said, ‘Let’s try to make it feel very believable and specific to that place.’ This is a real place, a real period in time based on real stories, legends, and facts… The specificity of it feeling like that place was very important.”

Does knowing the true inspiration and in-turn locations behind Moana’s Te Fiti and Montunui make you appreciate the film even more? Would you like to visit the locations that inspired the film? Let us know in the comments below, and keep following AllEars for more Disney news!

What Does Te Fiti Mean in English?