Savanah Leaf (born 24 November 1993) is a British-American film director and video artist. [1] [2] Earth Mama , her BAFTA-winning debut feature length film, was produced by A24 and Film4, and premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. [3] Her directorial work includes the notable single-channel video run which first exhibited at Hauser & Wirth from June 24, 2023 until August 30, 2023. Other work also includes music videos for Gary Clark, Jr.'s single This Land (Grammy Award for Best Music Video nominee). [4]
Leaf is a former professional volleyball player and competed for Great Britain at the 2012 Summer Olympics. [5]
Leaf was born in London, and raised in Vauxhall early in life. [6] Her family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when she was age 8. She attended San Jose State University, then transferred to the University of Miami, where she graduated with a degree in psychology while playing NCAA division 1 volleyball. [7] [8] [9] Leaf later received a Masters in Drama from Central Saint Martins, at Drama Centre London. [10] Her mother, Alison Leaf, is a set dresser and animator, who has worked at Pixar and Industrial Light and Magic. [11] [12]
William Todd Field is an American filmmaker and actor. He is known for directing In the Bedroom (2001), Little Children (2006), and Tár (2022), which were nominated for a combined fourteen Academy Awards. Field has personally received six Academy Award nominations for his films; two for Best Picture, two for Best Adapted Screenplay, one for Best Director, and one for Best Original Screenplay.
Jacqueline Wright is an English director of film, TV and music promos.
Michael Costanza is an American filmmaker and award winning Palme d'Or nominated writer/director. He began his career in the Art Department on feature films at Paramount. He then went on to direct short films and music videos. His short Mama Said screened at Sundance and in the Official Selection of films in Competition at The Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Palme d'Or award. Mama Said is a critique of Race relations and pop culture of 60’s America. Mama Said also screened on The Sundance Channel.
Jennie Livingston is an American director best known for the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning.
James Marsh is a British film and documentary director best known for his work on Man on Wire, which won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and The Theory of Everything, the multi-award-winning biopic of physicist Stephen Hawking released in 2014.
Amma Asante is a British filmmaker, screenwriter, former actress, and Chancellor at Norwich University of the Arts, who was born in London, England, to parents from Ghana. Her love for the film industry started when she received her first role in BBC's children's television drama series Grange Hill. Asante wrote and produced the 1998 BBC Two television series Brothers and Sisters, starring David Oyelowo. She was a childhood friend of model Naomi Campbell, whom she met when they were seven years old.
Sally El-Hosaini is a Welsh-Egyptian BAFTA nominated film director and screenwriter.
Withoutabox was a website founded in January 2000 by David Straus, Joe Neulight and Charles Neulight which allowed independent filmmakers to self-distribute their films. The first product launched was the International Film Festival Submission system. Withoutabox worked with film festivals and filmmakers all over the world. In January 2008, Withoutabox was acquired by IMDb, a subsidiary of Amazon.
Michael Please is an English animator, illustrator, director, and writer.
Alex Ross Perry is an American filmmaker and actor. Prolific in independent film, he is best known for writing and directing Listen Up Philip (2014) and Her Smell (2018).
Desiree Akhavan (Persian: دزیره اخوان, born December 27, 1984) is an American filmmaker, writer and actress. She is best known for her 2014 feature film debut Appropriate Behavior, and her 2018 film The Miseducation of Cameron Post. She appeared in the found footage horror film Creep 2.
Lulu Wang is a Chinese-born American filmmaker. She is best known for writing and directing the comedy-drama films Posthumous (2014) and The Farewell (2019). For the latter, she received the Independent Spirit Award for Best Film and the film was named one of the top ten films of 2019 by the American Film Institute. Wang has also written, produced, and directed several short films, documentaries, and music videos.
Kimberly Reed is an American film director and producer who is best known for her documentaries Prodigal Sons and Dark Money which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. In 2007, Filmmaker magazine named her one of the "25 New Faces of Independent Film."
Atsuko Hirayanagi is a Japanese-American filmmaker.
Jody Lee Lipes is an American cinematographer and filmmaker.
Joseph Lyle Talbot is an American filmmaker. His debut feature film, The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019), which he co-wrote and directed, won the Best Director prize at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The film is loosely based on the life of his childhood best friend, Jimmie Fails.
Radha Blank is an American actress, filmmaker, playwright, rapper, and comedian. Born and raised in New York City, Blank is known for writing, directing, producing, and starring in The Forty-Year-Old Version (2020), for which she won the U.S. Dramatic Competition Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival making Radha, after Ava DuVernay, only the second Black Woman Director in Sundance’s 40 year history to win the award.
Time is a 2020 American documentary film produced and directed by Garrett Bradley. It follows Sibil Fox Richardson and her fight for the release of her husband, Rob, who was serving a 60-year prison sentence for engaging in an armed bank robbery.
Earth Mama is a 2023 drama film directed and written by Savanah Leaf, based on the short film The Heart Still Hums by Leaf and Taylor Russell. It was released theatrically in the United States on July 7, 2023, by A24 and in the United Kingdom on December 8, 2023, by We Are Parable. It won the Outstanding British Debut award at the 2024 BAFTAs and was named one of the top 10 independent films of 2023 by the National Board of Review.
Tia Nomore is an American actress and rapper. She is known for her debut leading role in the 2023 drama film, Earth Mama, for which she received positive reviews from critics and British Independent Film Awards and Independent Spirit Awards nominations.