Vincent Ward (born 16 February 1956) is a New Zealand film director, screenwriter and artist. His films have received international recognition at both the Academy Awards and the Cannes Film Festival. Life and career Vincent Ward was born on 16 February 1956 near Greytown, New Zealand. He attended Ilam School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand where he received a Diploma in Fine Arts (with Honours) in 1981. In 2014 the University of Canterbury awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts and an adjunct professorship. In 1978, at the age of 21, he shot A State of Siege, his debut short-feature film, which adapted a novel by Janet Frame. It was released theatrically and reviewed by The Los Angeles Times who described it as, ‘Rigorously constructed with one exquisitely composed image following another ... film becomes poetry’. The film won a Special Jury Prize at the Miami Film Festival 1978 and a Golden Hugo Award at the Chicago Film Festival that same year. In 1978–81, Ward lived in remote Te Urewera with a Tūhoe woman named Puhi and her adult schizophrenic son Niki. He made a documentary about them called In Spring One Plants Alone, which won the 1982 Grand Prix at Cinéma du Réel (Paris), and a Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival. Ward's next three films, Vigil (1984), The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988) and Map of the Human Heart (1993) were the first films by a New Zealander to be officially selected ‘in competition’ at the Cannes Film Festival. Between them they garnered close to 30 national and international awards (including the Grand Prix at festivals in Italy, Spain, Germany, France and the United States). Vigil (1984), follows an imaginative, solitary child living on a remote farm and is partly inspired by Ward's own rural upbringing in the Wairarapa. It was produced by John Maynard and shot in Taranaki. Child actor Fiona Kay played the central role. Ward's second feature, a fantasy-adventure film, The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988), was inspired by an experience he had in Germany. He recounts attempting to cross the autobahn on foot and ending up dodging traffic. The experience made such an impression on him, it was the key image that sparked the idea for the film. The Navigator follows a group of 14th-century Cumbrian villagers who tunnel through the earth, and find themselves