Niki Caro

Niki Caro (2017)

Niki Caro (* 1967 in Wellington ) is a New Zealand film director and screenwriter .

Life

Training and first short film

Niki Caro was born in 1967 in the New Zealand capital Wellington. After her Bachelor Accounts at the Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland , she graduated with diploma at Swinburne School of Film and Television in Melbourne , Australia . The New Zealander made her directorial debut in 1994 with the 13-minute short film Sure to Rise , which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival that same year . The bizarre love story about a woman nursing an injured parachutist was nominated for the Palme d'Or in the Best Short Film category in Cannes and was released seven years later with six other New Zealand short films under the title Dark Stories: Tales From Beyond the Grave . Footage , a short film on the subject of shoe fetishism , was shown in the 1996 official selection of the Venice Film Festival .

Niki Caro's feature film debut followed in 1997 . The love drama Memory & Desire , for which she also wrote the screenplay, is set in Tokyo and is about the young Japanese girl Sayo, who falls in love with Keiji. Although Keiji's mother is against the relationship, they get married and spend their honeymoon backpacking across New Zealand. The young woman only gradually notices that her husband is having problems getting intimate with her. Although Sayo is deeply offended by her husband's sexual inadequacy, she patiently waits for Keiji, who drowns in a swimming accident in the ocean. Out of sorrow and grief, the young woman visits the place of the tragic accident again after her husband's funeral. The English-language film is again shown as part of the Critics' Week in Cannes and at the Film Festival of Stockholm as a Best Picture nomination. 1999 is Memory & Desire at the New Zealand Film and Television Awards honored with four awards. In addition to the trophy for the best film and the prize for Memory & Desire leading actress Yuri Kinugawa for best foreign actress, Niki Caro was awarded the special jury prize for her second directorial work.

Breakthrough with Whale Rider

The New Zealand director caused a sensation five years later when she took over the direction of the drama Whale Rider in 2002 . The 1987 published novel by author Witi Ihimaera is a thousand-year-old New Zealand Legend basis, stating that the Māori Paikea, a member of Whangara strain, on the back of Wales rode and was saved from drowning. Centuries later in modern times, 11-year-old Pai, a distant descendant of Paikea, believes she is fated to become the new head of the Whangara. Her grandfather Koro, an old patriarch who traditionally would only accept a male successor, is opposed to this. The film, which cost 6 million New Zealand dollars (approx. 3.5 million euros ), became a worldwide hit with audiences and a favorite with critics. Whale Rider has won 28 international festival and critic awards, including the prestigious British BAFTA film award for best children's feature film. In 2004 , the 14-year-old leading actress Keisha Castle-Hughes, selected from 10,000 applicants, was nominated for an Oscar for best female actress as the youngest actress in the history of the Oscars . In the same year, Caro herself was honored as International Filmmaker of the Year at the ShoWest conference of US cinema owners .

The huge success of Whale Rider made Hollywood producers aware of Niki Caro. In 2005 the director was engaged for the film Kaltes Land . Based on the book Class Action by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler , the drama depicts the first successful trial of a woman who sued her employer for sexual harassment at work in the mid-1980s. Cold Land , in which critics praised the acting performance of the leading actress Charlize Theron , was filmed in Minnesota and New Mexico . 2006 both Theron and supporting actress Frances McDormand were nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress and Supporting Actress, respectively.

Niki Caro's other work also includes the television productions The Summer the Queen Came , a study of the intricacies of suburban life, and the Montana Sunday Theater drama Plain Tastes , which she directed and scripted. Niki Caro received nominations for both films in 1994 and 1997 at the New Zealand Film and Television Awards, including best director and screenwriter.

The filmmaker is married to the architect Andrew Lister, with whom they have a child.