Niki Caro

Niki Caro graduated from Auckland's Elam School of Fine Arts in 1988, following it with a 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 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 the self-described "writer/director/waitress" two nominations at the 1994 NZ Film and Television Awards.

The same year, Caro's short Sure To Rise was selected to compete at the Cannes Film Festival (as was fellow NZ film Lemming Aid). One of only eight films chosen from roughly 300 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 (1996). Made for the Work of Art series, this offbeat documentary about the cult of the shoe, managed to win invitation to the Venice Film Festival.

Caro's first feature film, Memory and Desire, was selected for Critics Week at Cannes in 1998. 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.

But it was follow-up feature Whale Rider that bought Caro to a large international audience. Caro said the film was "essentially about leadership and the fact that leadership presents itself in the form of a young girl". The result scooped more than 27 awards, including audience awards for favourite film at Toronto, Sundance and Rotterdam, and best film and director at Seattle. Lead actor, 12-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes, was Oscar-nominated for playing 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 Oscars, BAFTAS, Golden Globes, and Screen Actors Guild gongs 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 Whale Rider star 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 an awardwinning one for Straitjacket Fits song Bad Note for a Heart.