The girls and gorillas at a singing telegram company are overworked because it is Valentine's Day. A series of sub-plots - a sexist disc jockey loses his dog and the girls fine it; one of the girls fights for custody of her child; an aspiring opera singer gets her chance to audition; and evil developer demolishes the telegram company's offices, etc, which all adds up to a large dose of confusion.

During the Great Depression, Kate (Greer Robson) is a 13-year-old girl living on New Zealand's South Island. When her mother dies and her father is offered a job in Wellington on North Island, Kate is sent to live with an aunt. The girl runs away to find her father, hopping onto a boxcar and befriending a fellow fugitive, Patrick (Peter Phelps), an emotionally battle-scarred WWI veteran fleeing the authorities after injuring a repo man. Pretending to be father and daughter, Patrick and Kate use each other for cover as they make their way across New Zealand, sleeping under the stars and championing the rights of destitute farmers and homeless squatters whose fortunes have been wiped out by economic hardship.

Set in and around the fictional town of Kapua in 1948, Ngāti is the story of a Māori community. The film comprises three narrative threads: a boy, Ropata, is dying of leukaemia; the return of a young Australian doctor, Greg, and his discovery that he has Māori heritage; and the fight to keep the local freezing works open.