Sunderland starred as Uncle Rory in Daniel Borgman's debut feature
The Weight of Elephants. He was nominated for a Best Actor Award in the 2006 NZ Screen Awards for ''Nature's Way'', which screened In Competition at the
Cannes Film Festival in 2006. His other feature film roles include
A Song of Good, Christmas, Stringer Woodenhead Existence, and ''
The Devil's Rock''. Sunderland made his directorial and screenwriting debut with the short film
Tuffy, which deals with estrangement between a father and son, in small town New Zealand. In 2013, Sunderland played in the stage adaptation of
Kate Grenville’s Booker Prize-shortlisted
The Secret River with the Sydney Theatre Company, which toured throughout Australia. He also appeared in
Shortland Street as White Dragon, in a storyline concluding the three-year
Kieran Mitchell story arc. In 2016, Sunderland played the role of a drunken man resisting alien abduction in the music video for "Bergschrund" by
DJ Shadow and
Nils Frahm. Sunderland played the chemist, Joseph Pritchard in the 2020 miniseries
The Luminaries. == Filmography ==