Max Currie
In 2022, Max Currie won the coveted "Best Director" prize at the New Zealand Television Awards for transgender drama series 'Rurangi', which he both directed and co-produced. 'Rurangi' exists as both a series (streaming on hulu) and a stand-alone feature film. Starting its 2020 festival run with a world premiere at Frameline 44, 'Rurangi' the feature won Frameline's AT&T Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. Max has been a full-time staff writer for five years on prime-time network serial drama 'Shortland Street', leaving to write on both seasons of New Zealand's TV2 comedy drama 'Step Dave'. In 2014, Max wrote and directed 'Everything We Loved', his multi-award-winning feature debut about a travelling magician duo who steal a child. Everything We Loved played in competition in a slew of festivals, including Palm Springs, Munich, Sao Paulo, Seattle, St Petersburg and Marrakech, winning Best Actress and Best Cinematography at the 2014 NZ Film Awards, Best Actor at St Tropez, and Best Director at VTXIFF 2015 in Texas. It remains the number one most-watched title on the NZ Film On Demand VOD platform. Max is an active member of The Falcons, Auckland's gay and inclusive rugby club, and while his short-lived union days are behind him he remains a committed touch rugby player. He's also been a bartender at a New York go-go bar, a New Zealand youth ambassador, a regional piano soloist, a writer for New Zealand's biggest women's magazine; the host and director of groundbreaking GLBTQi television series QueerNation, a two-times Goethe Institute scholarship recipient and Berlinale Talent. Max is the son of a Scottish-born microbiologist and a Kiwi kindergarten teacher. He and his younger brother grew up in the agricultural epicentre of New Zealand that is Palmerston North. Max has dual Kiwi/British citizenship, speaks German, and is the long-time collaborator of German writer/actress Odine Johne.