Renae Maihi

Renae Maihi is an award winning writer and director in theatre and film best known for the feature film Waru which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017. She is Maori of the Ngapuhi tribe on her fathers side and European and Maori of the Te Arawa tribe on her mothers side. After completing a drama degree in 2005 in which she trained as an actress and theatre maker full time for 3 years, Renae went on to write her breakout debut play Nga Manurere starring Keisha Castle-Hughes. The NZ Herald "Best of 2009" favoured Nga Manurere as "the surprise jewell of the year" solidifying the need for Renae's voice in the landscape. A huge lover of cinema she very quickly moved into film beginning with the dramatic short Redemption which she co-wrote with celebrated NZ writer Tim Balme. Directed by Katie Wolfe, Redemption travelled to Berlin Film Festival, Sundance & won the Best Short Film at Toronto's imagineNative Film Festival in 2010. Inspired by Katie Wolfe, Renae went on to write and direct her NZ Film Commission funded short film Purerehua (Butterfly) which screened at imagineNATIVE in Toronto and garnered a best actress award for newcomer Jahna Batt at the Wairoa Maori Film Festival. Weaving between film and theatre, in 2014 her play Patua won Renae the prestigious PlayMarket Adam NZ Playwrights "Best Play by a Maori Playwright" Award. Directed by Renae, in its debut season critics called Patua "A NZ Classic" noting that it should be "studied in every high school in NZ." In 2015 Renae's short film Mannahatta, shot entirely on location in New York City premiered in Toronto at imagineNATIVE and was selected for the NZIFF Nga Whanaunga section. Both her films Mannahatta and Purerehua were acquired by FNX TV in California and broadcast across North America. In 2017 Renae's first feature film WARU which she wrote and directed in collaboration with eight other Maori women filmmakers had its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and its world premiere at the NZIFF where a critic named Waru the "Best NZ drama in years." Waru won best feature screenplay at the NZ Screen Writing Awards in 2017, the Grand Jury Award for an Outstanding International Narrative Feature at the 34th Asia Pacific Film Festival in Los Angeles and the "Best of SIFF Audience Award" at the Seattle International Film Festival. In 2018 Renae was awarded the NZ Film Commission Maori Screen Excellence Award and received $50,000 which she put towards writing time for her feature film projects. She was also awarded the Whakapapa Film Festival Award in the Matera Province of Italy in that same year. After 2 years living in writing in Toronto Renae returned to New Zealand to write and direct on the NZ / Australia co-production feature film We Are Still Here which will premiere in 2022. She has various feature film screenplays in development and is represented by Hollywood based management 5xmedia. She is the proud mother of her son Dallas who she had at 18 years old and is now an adult.