Kriv Stenders

Kriv Stenders is an Australian writer, film producer, and director, best known for his 2011 film Red Dog (2011) and the 2014 thriller film Kill Me Three Times. His new film The Correspondent, based on a memoir by Australian journalist Peter Greste, had its world premiere on the opening gala night of the Adelaide Film Festival on 23 October 2024.

In his early career, he made many music videos for well-known Australian rock musicians and bands, including The Go-Betweens, later the subject of a feature-length documentary.

Kriv Stenders was born in Brisbane, Queensland. He is of Latvian heritage on one side of the family. He subsequently lived on the Gold Coast, then in the Brisbane suburbs of Kenmore, Toowong, and later Annerley.

He attended high school in Toowong. He met The Go-Betweens at a record store in Toowong, and became friends with them.

In 1989 he graduated from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.

Between 1987 and 1994, Stenders began by directing music videos for many famous Australian bands and musicians, including Angry Anderson, Mental As Anything, Ian Moss, The Go-Betweens, Choirboys, Noiseworks. John Farnham, Single Gun Theory, Ratcat, and 1927.

During this time, he also made short-form films and TV commercials, via his company Prod Films. In 1994, he made the documentary short-feature Motherland, exploring the Latvian and Australian heritage of his two grandmothers.

In 2002, he shot his first feature film, the micro-budget, self-finance film Blacktown. The film stars Stenders friend Tony Ryan as an aboriginal bus driver who falls in love with a woman in a relationship with a married man. The film was screened at the Sydney Film Festival in 2005 and won the audience award in the sidebar section.