Ahmir K. Thompson, known professionally as Questlove, is an American musician, record producer, disc jockey, filmmaker, music journalist, and actor. He is the drummer and joint frontman for the hip hop band the Roots. The Roots have been serving as the in-house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon since 2014, after having fulfilled the same role on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Questlove is also one of the producers of the cast album of the Broadway musical Hamilton. He is the co-founder of the websites Okayplayer and OkayAfrica. He is also known for the podcast Questlove Supreme. Additionally, he is an adjunct professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University.
Lorraine Toussaint is a Trinidadian-American actress. She is the recipient of various accolades, including a Black Reel Award, a Critics' Choice Television Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Kat Candler is an American film writer, producer, and director. She wrote and directed the 2014 film Hellion, and has worked on television shows including 13 Reasons Why and Queen Sugar.
Aunjanue L. Ellis-Taylor is an American actress. Known for her work in several film and television productions, she has received several awards including nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. Prior to 2023, she was known as Aunjanue Ellis.
Ava Marie DuVernay is an American filmmaker. She is a recipient of a Primetime Emmy Award, a NAACP Image Award, a BAFTA Film Award and a BAFTA TV Award, as well as a nominee of an Academy Award and Golden Globe.
Black women filmmakers have made contributions throughout the history of film. According to Nsenga Burton, writer for The Root, "the film industry remains overwhelmingly white and male. In 2020, 74.6 percent of movie directors of theatrical films were white, showing a small decrease from the previous year. In terms of representation, 25.4 percent of film directors were of ethnic minority in 2020. Of the 25.4 percent of minority filmmakers, a small percentage was female.
Emayatzy Corinealdi is an American actress. She starred in the Ava DuVernay 2012 drama film Middle of Nowhere for which she won Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Performer and received Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead nomination. Corinealdi later starred in films Miles Ahead (2016), and The Invitation (2015). On television, she played the role of Belle in the 2016 remake of Roots. She also starred in Hand of God (2014-2017), Ballers (2017-2019), and The Red Line (2019). In 2022, Corinealdi began starring in the Hulu legal drama series, Reasonable Doubt.
Aurora Guerrero is a writer-director from California.
Middle of Nowhere is a 2012 American independent drama film written and directed by Ava DuVernay and starring Emayatzy Corinealdi, David Oyelowo, Omari Hardwick and Lorraine Toussaint. The film was the winner of the Directing Award for U.S. Dramatic Film at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
Bradford Marcel Young, A.S.C is an American cinematographer. He is best known for his work on the films Selma, A Most Violent Year, Arrival (2016)—which earned him a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography—and Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), as well as the Netflix miniseries When They See Us (2019).
Lauren Wolkstein is an American film director, writer, producer and editor. She is known for directing, writing, and editing the 2017 film The Strange Ones with Christopher Radcliff and serving on the directorial team for the third season of Ava DuVernay's Queen Sugar, which she followed with a producing director role in the fifth season. She is an Associate Professor of Film and Media Arts at Temple University in Philadelphia.
Victoria Mahoney is an American actress and filmmaker. Her debut feature was 2011’s Yelling to the Sky.
Selma is a 2014 historical drama film directed by Ava DuVernay and written by Paul Webb. It is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches initiated and directed by James Bevel and led by Martin Luther King Jr., Hosea Williams, and John Lewis. The film stars actors David Oyelowo as King, Tom Wilkinson as President Lyndon B. Johnson, Tim Roth as George Wallace, Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, and Common as Bevel.
A Wrinkle in Time is a 2018 American science fantasy adventure film directed by Ava DuVernay and written by Jennifer Lee and Jeff Stockwell, based on Madeleine L'Engle's 1962 novel of the same name. Produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Whitaker Entertainment, the story follows a young girl who, with the help of three astral travelers, sets off on a quest to find her missing father. The film stars Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Levi Miller, Storm Reid, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Peña, Zach Galifianakis, and Chris Pine.
Howard Barish is president and CEO of Kandoo Films, an Oscar nominated, Emmy award winning entertainment company known for its producing partnership with Ava DuVernay. Barish and Kandoo's most recognized project to date, 13th, is a 2016 American documentary from Netflix directed by DuVernay. Centered on race in the United States criminal justice system, the critically lauded film is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which outlawed slavery. It argues that slavery is being effectively perpetuated through mass incarceration.
The Black Reel Award for Outstanding Director is an award presented annually by the Black Reel Awards (BRA). It is given in honor of a film director who has exhibited outstanding directing while working in the film industry.
The Toronto Black Film Festival is an annual film festival in Toronto, Ontario. Held in February each year as part of Black History Month, the festival programs a selection of African, Caribbean, African American and Black Canadian films.
Blake Anthony DeLong is an American film, television, and stage actor best known for originating the role of Andrey/Old Bolkonsky in the hit musical Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. He played the lead role opposite James Hand in Matt Muir's film Thank You a Lot, which premiered on the opening night of SXSW Film Festival in 2014. He is featured in Ava DuVernay's When They See Us on Netflix and played supporting roles in Spike Lee's 2018 film Pass Over, as well as Sister Aimee and Late Night, which both appeared at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019. He recently earned praise as axe murderer William Kemmler in the 2020 Sundance film Tesla, by Michael Almereyda. Notable stage work includes Othello at New York Theatre Workshop, a turn as David Amram in Illyria at The Public Theater, and the sixth Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, opposite Wendell Pierce.
This is a list of winners for the Sundance Film Festival Directing Award for dramatic features.
Origin is a 2023 American biographical drama film written and directed by Ava DuVernay. It is based on the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, which describes racism in the United States as an aspect of a caste system.
