Ava DuVernay

Ava DuVernay is an Academy Award nominee and winner of Emmy, BAFTA, Sundance, Image, and Peabody Awards. Her debut feature film, the historical drama Selma, was the first film directed by a Black woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Her criminal justice documentary, 13th, made her the first Black woman in Academy history nominated as a feature director. Her A Wrinkle in Time became the highest-grossing film directed by a Black woman in the United States. DuVernay’s critically acclaimed series When They See Us, all of whose episodes she wrote, produced and directed, was nominated for sixteen Emmy Awards. Her series Queen Sugar became the longest running Black family drama in television history. Winner of the Best Director Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for Middle of Nowhere, she was the first Black filmmaker to be awarded the top prize in the festival’s history. With Origin, DuVernay broke ground as the first African-American woman director with a film in competition at the Venice International Film Festival. DuVernay amplifies the work of people of color and all women through Array, her narrative change studio, which won the Peabody Institutional Award in 2021. She sits on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and holds positions on the boards of the Director’s Guild of America and the American Film Institute.