GAYLENE PRESTON – DIRECTOR/WRITER/PRODUCER

GAYLENE PRESTON is writer, director and producer of Perfect Strangers.  Her 
award winning features include Mr Wrong (1984), Ruby and Rata, Bread & 
Roses and WAR STORIES Our Mothers Never Told Us, which had its European 
premiere in official selection at the 1995 Venice Film Festival.  She has 
produced several documentaries including the award-winning feature, 
Punitive Damage and Coffee, Tea and Me?   With Perfect Strangers she 
returns to her roots as a genre filmmaker, delivering a perversely chilling 
romance. 

PRESTON’S work has won eleven New Zealand film awards (including best 
film) as well as many international awards including a Silver Clio (Cannes) 
and Mobius Award (Chicago) for outstanding direction of a commercial.  Her 
films have been regularly selected for major film festivals including Venice, 
Sundance, Toronto, London, Melbourne and Sydney - where in 1999 she was 
a member of the International Jury.  

In 2001 GAYLENE PRESTON was honoured by the NZ Arts Foundation, 
becoming New Zealand's first film maker Laureate.  She was appointed an 
Officer of the NZ Order of Merit in 2002 for services to film making.	

Perfect Strangers is GAYLENE PRESTON’S first feature from a self-authored 
screenplay.