Nicole (Nic) Puni is a proud Samoan and Saibai Island creative, born in Wellington, NZ, raised on Awabakal country and is a NIDA recipient of the 2024 Prime Video Scholarship. Nic is a graduate of the Bachelor of Arts: Screen Production at the Australian Film, Televisionand Radio School (AFTRS) and is currently studying NIDA’s Master of Fine Arts Directing, where her theatrical directing debut play, Duplexity will be featured at NIDA’s 2025 Festival of Emerging Artists.
\Nic’s creative skillset, and experience includes directing, writing, producing and editing stories focused on highlighting the voices of women, people of colour, Indigenous Australians, LGBTQIA+ folk, marginalised youth, and everyday people. Nic feels that the commonality with all these stories is that each work explores diverse and complex relationships in an engaging and entertaining ways. Nic’s creative portfolio of work includes her music video directorial debut, “Something About It” for Indie band, Dizzy Dayz which was featured on triple j Unearthed (2024) and her SBS short documentary debut, Tracking Farmer Dave which was featured on SBS on Demand (2021). While working on documentaries and music videos, Nic’s portfolio also includes roles as Executive Producer and Assistant Director on the award-winning short film, KEYS (2019) which had its World Premiere in California, USA.
Nic would like to work in the Australian and international screen and theatre industry, as a writer and director for both episodic and film. Also ideally working in an advocacy role to encourage other diverse creatives underrepresented in the film industry specifically Pacific Islanders and other First Nations backgrounds to occupy and navigate key creative roles in productions for film, television, theatre and streaming platforms.