Niki Caro was born in Wellington, New Zealand on 1967.

She followed that up with the television drama The Summer The Queen Came, which received best writer and best director nominations at the 1994 New Zealand Film and Television Awards. Her 1996 short film Footage was an Official Selection at the Venice Film Festival.

Caro’s first feature, Memory and Desire (1997), was in the lineup at the Cannes Film Festival and won a Special Jury Prize at the New Zealand Film Awards. She went on to write and direct the one hour TV drama Plain Tastes and a half-hour episode of the drama series True Life Stories.

She also directed Whale Rider (2002), which won Caro worldwide acclaim.

With North Country (2005), starring Charlize Theron, Caro directed her first movie for which she hadn’t written the screenplay. Another first was that it was filmed in the United States, on location in northern Minnesota.

In 1994 her short film, Sure to Rise was nominated for a Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival.

Caro is married to architect Andrew Lister, with whom she has a young daughter.

Director

• The Vintner's Luck (2007)
• North Country (2005)
• Whale Rider (2002)
• "Mercy Peak" (2001) TV Series
• Memory & Desire (1997)
• Sure to Rise (1994)