Joan Scheckel previously collaborated with director Niki Caro on her award-winning film Whale Rider, where Scheckel is credited as script consultant.

She is renowned throughout Hollywood and the international film production community for her filmmaking workshops, which have been the driving force behind some of the most exciting films being made today, including the Academy Award winning Little Miss Sunshine.

Since 1998, Joan has work-shopped over 280 films in her labs and as a highly valued script doctor and directing coach. To date, films which have benefited from her workshops have earned a total of 305 award nominations and 163 awards including major wins at the Academy Awards, Cannes, Independent Spirit Awards, BAFTA, Cesar Awards, Producers’ Guild of America, Writers’ Guild of America, Screen Actors Guild, Berlin, Toronto, and Sundance Film Festival.

Because of the long time scale of a man’s life, and the technical difficulties of the angel, I did think that it was a bit of a hard ask for a filmmaker. But … I was very keen for it to happen and I had great faith that if anyone could do it, Niki could put it together.

Elizabeth Knox is one of New Zealand’s leading authors and The Vintner’s Luck is her best-known novel to date, described by the New York Times as an “original, often astonishingly vivid novel.”

Winner of New Zealand’s most prestigious literary prize, the Montana Book Awards’ Deutz Medal for Fiction, and the inaugural Tasmania Pacific Region Prize, the novel is published in eight territories including USA, UK and France, where it was shortlisted for the Prix Ville De Saumur, in the Esprit Baccus section.

The inspiration for the story was a dream about the friendship between a winemaker and angel experienced by Knox when she was ill.  Although her story is set in Burgundy she did not visit the region until after the book was published.

Elizabeth Knox’ novels include the Dreamhunter Duet; two fantasy novels for young adults. The first book, Dreamhunter, won the Esther Glen Award, and Dreamquake was a Michael L Printz Award Honour book in 2008.

Her first novel After Zero Hour (1987) was followed by Treasure, which was shortlisted for the 1993 New Zealand Book Award. In 2002 Billie’s Kiss was a finalist in the Montana Book Awards.

In 1997, Elizabeth was Writer in Residence at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand, and 1999 was chosen as the Katherine Mansfield Fellow at Menton, France.

In 2002, Elizabeth Knox was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

She has recently published The Angel’s Cut, a sequel to The Vintner’s Luck.

Elizabeth Knox and her husband Fergus Barrowman visited The Vintner’s Luck set in France and appear as featured guests at the wedding of Sobran and Celeste’s daughter Sabine.