Tainui Stephens (Te Rarawa) is one of Aotearoa’s most prominent Māori storytellers – a filmmaker, broadcaster and writer. He began at TVNZ in 1984, reporting for the pioneering Māori programme Koha, and has worked as a screen director, producer and presenter ever since.
His directing credits include the documentaries When the Haka Became Boogie (1990), The New Zealand Wars (1998), Hitler and the Gumdiggers (2014) and Taumata 3001 (2025). He was a producer for the feature films River Queen (2005), The Dead Lands (2014), Whina (2022) and Holy Days (2025). In recent years he has written extensively for E-Tangata.
He lives at Ōtaki Beach, where he is one of the five founders of the Māoriland Film Festival, alongside his wife and fellow filmmaker, Libby Hakaraia.