Kriv Stenders is one of Australia’s most renowned, respected and prolific film directors with numerous critically acclaimed and award winning shorts, documentaries, music videos, television commercials, television series and feature films to his credit. His early feature films include BLACKTOWN, THE ILLUSTRATED, FAMILY DOCTOR, BOXING DAY, and LUCKY COUNTRY.
His fifth feature, RED DOG, released by Roadshow in August 2011, earned over $22 million at the box office, making it the eighth highest grossing Australian film of all time. It has also become the highest selling Australian DVD of all time. RED DOG won both Best Director and Best Film at the 2011 IF Awards and Best Film at the inaugural 2012 ACCTA Awards.
In 2014 Kriv directed KILL ME THREE TIMES, starring Simon Pegg, Bryan Brown, Alice Braga, Teresa Palmer, and Sullivan Stapleton. That same year he directed THE PRINCIPAL, a four part television drama for SBS, starring Alex Dimitriades and Aden Young, plus the feature length documentary, WHY ANZAC WITH SAM NEILL.
In 2015, he directed RED DOG: TRUE BLUE, the sequel to RED DOG which was released by Roadshow on Boxing Day 2016 and went on to earn more than $7 million at the local box office. In 2016, he directed AUSTRALIA DAY for Foxtel, Hoodlum and Icon Films which starred Bryan Brown and Sean Keenan and was the first film released on the Dendy Demand platform.
Kriv directed the Vietnam War epic, DANGER CLOSE: THE BATTLE OF LONG TAN, starring Travis Fimmel and Richard Roxburgh which was theatrically released in 2019. In 2017 Kriv directed WAKE IN FRIGHT, Stephen M. Irwin’s contemporary re-imagining of the Australian classic which aired as a two-parter on Channel Ten. Kriv‘s critically acclaimed feature-length documentary THE GO-BETWEENS: RIGHT HERE premiered at the 2017 Sydney Film Festival and also screened at the Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane Film Festivals, ahead of a successful limited theatrical release. That same year he also completed production on Foxtel’s THE PACIFIC WITH SAM NEILL, a six-part documentary series retracing Captain Cook’s journeys across the Pacific which he co-directed with Sally Aitken.
Kriv’s latest projects include NCIS: SYDNEY for Endemol Shine; MOTHER AND SON for ABC TV; THE LAST DAYS OF THE SPACE AGE for Princess Pictures and Disney+; BUMP for Rough Diamond and Stan; the feature documentary BLACK HAND for WildBear Entertainment; the feature documentaries BOY FROM THE BUSH and SLIM & I for Pictures in Paradise; the feature documentary BROCK for WildBear Entertainment and Universal Pictures; the feature documentary AUSTRALIAN COUNTRY MUSIC for ABC TV and producers EQ and the feature documentary JUANITA for producers WildBear Entertainment.
