Director: Niki Caro

Producer: Tim Sanders and Witi Ihimaera

Director of Photography: Leon Narbey

Running Time: 101 minutes

Year of Production: 2002

A contemporary story of love and rejection as a young girl fights to fulfil her destiny. In a small New Zealand coastal village, Maori claim descent from Paikea, the Whale Rider. In every generation, a male heir has succeeded to the chiefly title. The time is now. When twins are born, and the boy twin dies, the chief is unable to accept his grand-daughter, Pai, as a future leader. Pai loves Koro, the chief, more than anyone in the world, but she must fight him and a thousand years of tradition to fulfil her destiny.

Whale Rider was adapted for the screen from the novel by award-winning New Zealand writer Witi Ihimaera. He was inspired to write Whale Rider in 1985 while living in an apartment in New York overlooking the Hudson River. “I heard helicopters whirling around and the ships in the river using all their sirens – a whale had come up the Hudson River and was spouting,” he recalls. “It made me think of my home town, Whangara and the whale mythology of that area.”

Caro comments on Whale Rider, “I believe very strongly that the story of Whale Rider chose to be told on film now. The Paikea legend has been around for over 1,000 years. But it chose to be told in book form through Witi Ihimaera in 1987 and it chooses to be told on film now. I don’t think the world was really ready for it a while ago. I think we are now. We’re ready to accept things spiritual.”

Academy Award Nomination (2003) Nomination, Best Actress

Screen Actors’ Guild Awards Nomination (2004), Best Supporting Actress

BAFTA Children’s Television and Film Awards, London (2003) Winner, Best Film

Sao Paulo International Film Festival (2003), Winner, Jury Prize

Sundance Film Festival (2003), Winner, Humanitas Award

Director / Scriptwriter Niki Caro is a highly successful, young director whose feature film debut, Memory & Desire, was selected for the prestigious Critics Week at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. Her short film Sure to Rise was nominated for the Palme d'Or Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1994. Caro was self taught in film through reading narrative film books. She started out with writing and once she was done writing a script, her mother typed it up for her at work. Following Whale Rider, Caro was chosen to direct her first Hollywood film, North Country (2005), starring Charlize Theron. It was later nominated for Best Actress for lead and supporting role at the Oscars and also was nominated for a Golden Globe.