Chelsea Winstanley (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi) is a film producer whose work celebrates Indigenous peoples and carries Māori stories to audiences at home and abroad. Born in Tauranga, she has built a body of work across short film, feature film, and documentary that keeps te ao Māori visible on screen and grounded in Māori authorship.

‍

Her producing credits span independent and international cinema. Early short films include Meathead, Ebony Society, and Night Shift. In 2014 she co-produced What We Do in the Shadows with Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, and she went on to produce Jojo Rabbit. In documentary she co-produced Te Whakarauora Tangata and the documentary Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen about Merata Mita. In 2017 she wrote and directed the segment Kiritapu for the anthology film Waru, which draws together eight stories confronting child abuse in Aotearoa.

‍

Reo revitalisation sits at the centre of her recent kaupapa. In 2017 she founded Matewa Media with Tweedie Waititi to create te reo Māori adaptations of animated films, releasing Moana that year and following with The Lion King and Frozen. She directed and produced the documentary TOITU: Visual Sovereignty. Her contribution has been widely recognised, from Independent Producer of the Year at the 2014 SPADA Screen Industry Awards and the Mana Wahine award at the 2015 Wairoa Māori Film Festival to honours from Women in Film and Television New Zealand across her career. In 2022 she was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the screen industry and Māori, and in 2026 she was elected a Companion of the Royal Society Te Apārangi for sustained and outstanding leadership in film-making and cinematography for Māori and for New Zealand.

‍

📸 New Zealand Government, Office of the Governor-General - https://gg.govt.nz/image-galleries/9551/media?page=2