Matthew Sunderland

Biography

Matthew is an award-winning writer, actor and director from New Zealand (Best Actor in a Feature Film – ‘Out Of The Blue’- 2006). Matthew has appeared in nearly twenty features both in New Zealand and internationally. The features and shorts have played in film festivals globally. He has been living on and off in Sydney since 2010, where he worked with The Sydney Theatre Company on their iconic production of ‘The Secret River’, which subsequently toured Australia three times. In 2015 Matthew traveled with ‘The Generation Of Z’, an immersive theatre production, to Edinburgh and London. From there he was cast in ‘The Lost City Of Z’, directed James Gray, which was shot in the jungles of Columbia. Most recently, he completed Jennifer Kent’s (‘The Babadook’) second feature ‘The Nightingale’, filmed in Tasmania. Matthews first short film, ‘Tuffy’, which he wrote and directed, was funded by the NZFC and played in the New Zealand International Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Short Film Script and the NZ Writers Guild Awards. His second short film, ‘The Calf’, co-written with Simon London and to be directed by them both, is in early pre-production. Matthew recently completed a six week course at the Atlantic Acting School in New York.