Chelsea Winstanley is an Oscar® nominated producer, an award-winning filmmaker and has worked across many genres as a producer, writer and director for over two decades.
As a p.g.a. producer on Taika Waititi’s Academy nominated feature Jojo Rabbit, Chelsea became the first indigenous female Oscar® nominee for Best Picture.
In 2014, she produced the hit mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows, directed by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement – now a TV show for FX. And early in her career, she produced several award winning short films two of which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
In 2019 she joined Night Raiders as a producer on the first Canadian / NZ Indigenous Co-Production written and directed by Creē first nations filmmaker Danis Goulet.
She produced the critically-acclaimed documentary feature, Merata: How Mum Decolonised The Screen. It was distributed by visionary filmmaker Ava Duvernay and Array, which played at the 2019 Sundance and Berlin film festivals and is now on NETFLIX worldwide.
In 2017 under Matewa Media she produced the first ever DISNEY reo māori animated film MOANA Reo Māori and has since reimagined and theatrically released six films over seven years.
In November 2024 Matewa Media became the first indigenous company in the world to theatrically release a new Disney title in an indigenous language, alongside the English version, of MOANA 2 in the same territory.
As a Director she was one of nine women who made the anthology feature WARU which won the LAAPFF best film award in 2018. Her short film Forgive Me has screened at ImagineNATIVE Film Festival and NZIFF. She is currently in Post Production with her Documentary Debut Feature Toi Tū Toi Ora Toitū!
Under production company This Too Shall Pass, Chelsea has several projects in various stages of development and production as both a director and producer and is in post production with her feature documentary TOITŪ Visual Sovereignty.
Heading into the future, Chelsea aims to create a distribution disruption and along with a growing circuit of independently owned cinemas, Chelsea’s focus to participate in every part of the filmmaking pipeline is being realised.
Chelsea is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture and Science, The Academy Indigenous Alliance, Women in Film & Television, and co-chair of The Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi.
