Niki Caro

Niki Caro completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Auckland's Elam School of Fine Arts in 1988. She followed it with a Postgraduate Diploma as a writer/director at Melbourne's Swinburne Film and Television School. Returning to New Zealand, Caro wrote and directed several shorts and TV dramas. 

In 1992 producer Owen Hughes invited Caro to contribute to a trilogy of half-hour TV dramas that were being made to bridge a gap for filmmakers between short films and features. Caro's contribution was The Summer the Queen Came, an affectionate look at the small, twisted details of a family in suburbia. The film earned Caro nominations for Best Writer and Best Director in the 1994 NZ Film and Television Awards.

The same year, Caro's short film Sure To Rise was selected to screen In Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. One of only eight films chosen from roughly 400 entries, Sure to Rise tells a near wordless story of a woman who discovers an injured airman.

Caro's work was growing more ambitious. Plain Tastes, her acclaimed Montana Sunday Theatre drama, was an hour-long piece about a middle class woman (Meryl Main) trying to find happiness and love. It was nominated in the Best Television Drama and Writer categories at the 1996 New Zealand Film and Television Awards.

There was also a rare excursion into documentary - although documentary leavened with moments of drama - with Footage. Made for the Work of Art series, this offbeat documentary about the cult of the shoe, was screened in Official Selection at the 1996 Venice Film Festival.

Caro's first feature film, Memory and Desire, was selected for Critics Week at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. Based on a short story by Peter Wells, the film follows the unraveling relationship of a Japanese couple as they travel New Zealand. Voted Best Film at the 1999 New Zealand Film Awards, Memory and Desire won a Special Jury Prize for Caro's work as both writer and director.

Caro's second feature Whale Rider won more than 27 awards, and screened in countries around the world. The award tally included prestigious international film festivals, with audience awards for favourite film at Toronto, Sundance and Rotterdam, and best film and director at Seattle. The film's lead actor, 12-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes, was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as a young East Coast Māori girl struggling to establish her place in her community.

Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan singled Caro out for particular praise, arguing that among other qualities she bought to the film "a willingness to let this story tell itself in its own time and the ability to create emotion that is intense without being cloying or dishonest. She is also able, and this is critical, to leave the mundane behind and steer the film to a higher level when the story demands to go there."

Caro followed Whale Rider with her Hollywood debut North Country, another story of a female being told what she can't do because of her gender. Inspired by a landmark American court case, the film stars Charlize Theron as a woman in a remote mining town who dares to stand up to sexual harassment in the workplace. Theron and fellow cast-member Frances McDormand were nominated for Academy Awards, BAFTAS,  Golden Globes, and Screen Actors Guild awards for their work on the film.

Caro's next production, The Vintner's Luck was released in New Zealand in November 2009, after debuting at the Toronto Film Festival. A tale of angels, friendships and winemaking, adapted from the acclaimed novel by Elizabeth Knox, the film involved locations in France, Belgium and New Zealand. The multi-national cast also saw Caro reuniting with actor Keisha Castle-Hughes.

Niki Caro's early work includes the short film Old Bastards (a portrait of six elderly men, shot on Super 8mm), episodes of 90s televison series Jackson's Wharf, and a number of music videos - including one for Straitjacket Fits song Bad Note for a Heart, which won her the Best Video award at the 1990 NZ Music Awards.