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 immigrated 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] Leaf later received a Masters in Drama from Central Saint Martins, at Drama Centre London. [9] Her mother, Alison Leaf, is an animator and set dresser, who has worked at Pixar and Industrial Light and Magic. [10] [11]
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.
Siân Heder is an American filmmaker who is best known for writing and directing the films Tallulah and CODA. CODA earned Heder an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film also won the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Troy Kotsur.
Jacqueline Wright is an English director of film, TV and music promos.
Jennie Livingston is an American director best known for the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning.
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.
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,660 attending in 2016. The festival takes place every January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort, and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres. Many films premiering at Sundance have gone on to be nominated and win Oscars such as Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Michael Please is an English animator, illustrator, director, and writer.
Jillian Mayer is a visual performance artist and filmmaker. She was born in Miami and is based there today. Mayer's video works and performances have been displayed at galleries and museums internationally and film festivals such as SXSW and Sundance. Her work tends to focus on topics of technology and the Internet, and Rob Goyanes of Artsy has written that Mayer "probes the question of how technology is increasingly integrated into our lives...employing equal parts dystopian parody and real sincerity."
Kelly Marcel is a British screenwriter. She has written the films Saving Mr. Banks (2013), Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), Venom (2018) and its sequels Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) and the upcoming Venom: The Last Dance (2024), with which she will make her directorial debut. She also created and served as executive producer of the television series Terra Nova (2011).
In a World... is a 2013 American comedy film written, directed and co-produced by Lake Bell. The film stars Bell as a vocal coach who does film trailers. The film co-stars Demetri Martin, Fred Melamed, Rob Corddry, Michaela Watkins, Ken Marino, Nick Offerman, and Tig Notaro. The film is known for successfully crossing genres that make it more than an ordinary romantic comedy.
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.
Janicza Michelle Bravo Ford is an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter. Her films include Gregory Go Boom, a winner of the short-film jury award at the Sundance Film Festival; Lemon, co-written with Brett Gelman; and Zola, co-written with playwright Jeremy O. Harris.
Jody Lee Lipes is an American cinematographer and filmmaker.
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 an Academy Award-nominated 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.