Fiona Copland

Producer Fiona Copland is noted for quirky and ambitious films, many of them made with first-time directors. 2009's The Strength of Water won praise at festivals in Rotterdam and Berlin, while multi-stranded narrative feature Matariki arrived in New Zealand theatres in 2010 via the Toronto Film Festival. These days she is part of company Field Theory, with producers Philippa Campbell and Tim Sanders.

The roads that already existed were narrow, and there was a lot of mud ... the Hokianga part of the shoot was emotionally rewarding because of the way the community embraced us, but physically quite difficult. Fiona Copland, on making The Strength of Water