Max Currie a multi-award-winning writer, director, and producer.
Max Currie (1992-1995) is a multi-award-winning writer, director, and producer from Auckland, New Zealand.
While at School Max was a strong academic, receiving an 'A' bursary in form six. He represented the school in debating and was first in the Central Regions Senior Public Speaking for which he received an Honours Tie. Max appeared in many school productions and famously played 'Kevin Palmer' in the schools' version of Frankenstein in 1994. The following year he was selected to represent New Zealand, with one other student, at the student version of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), where he met the Queen, Nelson Mandela, and many other dignitaries.
Max most recently directed and co-produced the groundbreaking New Zealand transgender drama, 'Rurangi', which exists as both a series and a stand-alone feature film. Starting its 2020 festival run with a world premiere at Frameline 44, 'Rurangi' won Frameline's AT&T Audience Award for 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 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.
Click here to watch the official trailer for Rūrangi.
