Ava DuVernay

Ava Marie DuVernay is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer, renowned as the recipient of many prestigious awards such as two Primetime Emmy Awards, two NAACP Image Award, a BAFTA Film Award, and a BAFTA TV Award, as well as nominee for an Academy Award and Golden Globe. She made her directorial debut with I Will Follow in 2010 and went on to win the directing award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for her second feature film Middle of Nowhere, thus becoming the first black woman to receive the award. Achieving notable fame with Selma (2014), a biopic about Martin Luther King Jr., DuVernay became the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director. Other commendable works include the Academy Award-nominated Netflix documentary 13th (2016) and the Disney fantasy film A Wrinkle in Time (2018). DuVernay’s significant television credits include drama series such as Queen Sugar (2016), When They See Us (2019) and Colin in Black & White (2021). In 2020, she joined the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences board of governors, and in 2021, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Yale University.