Andrew Thomas McCarthy is an American actor, travel writer, and television director. He is most known as a member of the Brat Pack, with roles in 1980s films such as St. Elmo's Fire, Pretty in Pink, and Less than Zero. He is ranked No. 40 on VH1's 100 Greatest Teen Stars of all-time list. As a director, he is known for his work on the Emmy Award-winning series Orange Is the New Black.
Patricia Rozema is a Canadian film director, writer and producer. She was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in 1980s from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave.
Haile Gerima is an Ethiopian filmmaker who lives and works in the United States. He is a leading member of the L.A. Rebellion film movement, also known as the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers. His films have received wide international acclaim. Since 1975, Haile has been an influential film professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He is best known for Sankofa (1993), which won numerous international awards.
Vikas Swarup is a retired Indian diplomat and writer. He retired from the Indian Foreign Service as the Secretary (West) at the Ministry of External Affairs, India on 30 June 2021 and has previously served as High Commissioner of India in Canada and has been the official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs. He was best known as the author of the novel Q & A, adapted in film as Slumdog Millionaire, the winner of Best Film for the year 2009 at the Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards and BAFTA Awards.
Black Gold is a 2006 documentary film that follows the efforts of an Ethiopian coffee union manager as he travels the world to obtain a better price for his workers' coffee beans. The film was directed and produced by Marc James Francis and Nick Francis from Speakit Films, and co-produced by Christopher Hird. It premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
Yu Nan is a Chinese actress. Born in Dalian, Yu Nan studied at the Beijing Film Academy, where she graduated in 1999.
Prostitution in Ethiopia is legal, and widespread. Procuring is illegal according to Article 634 of the Ethiopian Penal Code, as revised May 2005, however these laws are rarely enforced. Some feel it has contributed to the increased incidence of AIDS. UNAIDS estimate there are over 19,000 prostitutes in the major cities.
Rodolfo R. Lana Jr., known professionally as Jun Robles Lana, is a Filipino filmmaker. The winner of 11 Palanca Awards for Literature, he became the youngest member of the Palanca Hall of Fame in 2006. In 2015, he directed the actual one-shot film, Shadow Behind The Moon, which won the Best Director, NETPAC and FIPRESCI awards at the 13th Pacific Meridian Film Festival. At the 20th International Film Festival of Kerala, he won the Best Director award for the same film.
Shamim Sarif is a British novelist and filmmaker of South Asian and South African heritage. Her work often focuses on various aspects of identity including gender, race, and sexuality. It often draws upon her own personal experience with cross cultural, non-heterosexual love.
Nnegest Likké is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. She's a proud Bay Area native with a bi-cultural background and has a passion for telling funny, feel-good, thought-provoking stories that are socially and culturally impactful. Her film awards include Best Diaspora Film at the 2016 African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) for " Ben and Ara " which she directed. Her 2019 international romantic drama, Everything But A Man won the Audience Choice Award at the Pan African Film Festival. Nnegest is one of the first women of color to write and direct a movie distributed by a major Hollywood studio. Her directing credits include Fox Searchlight's romantic-comedy Phat Girlz, the multi-award-winning indie love drama Ben & Ara, and Everything But A Man.
Teza is a 140 minutes 2008 Ethiopian drama film about the Derg period in Ethiopia. Teza won the top award at the 2009 Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou. The film was directed and written by Haile Gerima.
Anne Émond is a Canadian film director and screenwriter, currently based in Montreal, Quebec.
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is an American documentary filmmaker. She was the director, along with her husband, Jimmy Chin, for the film Free Solo, which won the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film profiled Alex Honnold and his free solo climb of El Capitan in June 2017.
Pocas Pascoal is an Angolan film director.
Price of Love is a 2015 Ethiopian drama film directed by Hermon Hailay which was screened in the Official Selection at 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.
Oliver Hermanus is a South African film director and writer. His films include Shirley Adams (2009), Beauty (Skoonheid) (2011), The Endless River (2015), and Moffie (2019). His film Beauty won the Queer Palm Award at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
Rubaiyat Hossain is a Bangladeshi film director, writer, and producer. She made the films Meherjaan (2011), Under Construction (2015) and Made in Bangladesh (2019).
The Cinema of Ethiopia and the film industry in general is a relatively recent phenomenon in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian film industry is growing, but faces many problems that have prevented it from fully flourishing. Historically live stage theater enjoyed more popularity in Ethiopia, creating a handful of relatively successful stage actors. Ethiopian films began modernizing since 2000s, implementing Amharic language, but due to wide home video and DVD distribution, it often frustrated by copyright infringement in presence of piracy. This was reduced in early 2010s with an intervention of government and imposition of policy. Despite recently developing, the Ethiopian film production continued to be lack of complement quality in relation to world premiere with low budget amateurish style.
Adanech Admassu is an Ethiopian filmmaker. The central axes of her work are cooperating with NGO programs in Ethiopia and addressing public health and human rights problems in Ethiopia and across Africa, with a focus on stories of girls and women. With Gem TV, she has produced many films about everyday life in the communities.
Mehret Mandefro is an Ethiopian–American film/television producer, writer, physician and anthropologist. She is the group leader of the Indaba Africa, a co-founder of Realness Institute and co-founder of Truth Aid Media and is a board member of advisors for the shared Harvest Fund. She is also a recipient of The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans (2001) and in 2007 sat as one of the 41 distinguished New American panelists. In 2016, she was honoured by Carnegie Corporation of New York as one of America's Great Immigrants.
