Directed by Tom Burstyn. Unrated. Plays Friday to Sunday, April 30 to May 2, and Wednesday, May 5, at the Vancity Theatre

On one level, the New Zealand doc This Way of Life is a portrait of one man’s attempt to take his family back to nature and rely on the land. “What do I do for a living? I live for a living,” proudly declares Kiwi cowboy Peter Karena, a striking, chiselled subject with a long dreadlocked ponytail.

Less overtly, it is also the story of a man tortured by family feuding and his own past, and stubbornly driven to raise his kids in a single-minded, idealistic way. By the end, you might not know whether to admire him or feel sorry for him—let alone for his wife and ever-growing brood. But whichever side you lean toward, this gentle film is engrossing from start to finish.

Part of the appeal is Canadian-born director-cinematographer Tom Burstyn’s sumptuous lensing of the remote Ruahine Range where the Karena clan lives. There, the loving father teaches his six children to be fearless and to respect the wilds. One extended scene finds him showing his small child how to skin a deer, stressing how the creature died so they could live. In another, a kid riding a horse bareback gets thrown, and he just stands up and brushes himself off.

Over the course of four years, the ever-expanding family loses its house twice. At one point, the clan subsists in tents; at another, Karena’s quietly suffering wife, with a newborn, is forced into making a shed a home. As the struggles mount, you have to wonder: is freedom really all a child needs?

The documentary poses interesting questions. But a few go frustratingly unanswered. Karena is a European adopted by Maori, and his abusive, spiteful adoptive father is the reason for much of his trouble—including the loss of one family home. More content on the family rows would have better completed the portrait of this man.

However, there’s enough here to leave you weighing the pros and cons of “this way of life” for days.