Age: 53
female
Ava Marie DuVernay (/ˌdjuːvərˈneɪ/; born August 24, 1972) is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer. She is a recipient of two Primetime Emmy Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, a BAFTA Film Award, and a BAFTA TV Award, as well as a nominee for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. In 2011, she founded her independent distribution company ARRAY. After making her directorial debut with I Will Follow (2010), DuVernay won the directing award in the U.S. dramatic competition at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for her second feature film, Middle of Nowhere, becoming the first black woman to win the award. For her work on 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; the film went on to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Her other film credits include the Academy Award-nominated Netflix documentary 13th (2016) and the Disney fantasy film A Wrinkle in Time (2018), the latter making her the first African-American woman to direct a film with a $100 million budget. In 2023, she directed the biographical film Origin based on Isabel Wilkerson's book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020). DuVernay's television credits include the OWN drama series Queen Sugar (2016) and two Netflix drama limited series: When They See Us (2019), based on the 1989 Central Park jogger case, and Colin in Black & White (2021), based on the teenage years of NFL player Colin Kaepernick. In 2017, DuVernay was included on the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. In 2020, she was elected to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences board of governors as part of the directors branch. Description above from the Wikipedia article Ava DuVernay, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Ava DuVernay
Director
for Director in Amédé: The Song That Never Fades
Suggested by kamsismith
Set against the vibrant, troubled backdrop of early 20th-century Louisiana, Amédé: The Song That Never Fades brings to life the extraordinary yet tragic story of Amédé Ardoin, the trailblazing Creole accordionist who became a cornerstone of Cajun and Zydeco music. From his humble beginnings on the dusty backroads of the segregated South to the vibrant dance halls where his unparalleled talent ignited the hearts of all who heard him, Amédé's journey is one of resilience, creativity, and heartbreak. A visionary musician with a haunting falsetto voice, Amédé bridged divides with his music, defying racial boundaries in a time of deep prejudice. But genius comes at a cost. His daring collaborations with white musicians, like fiddler Dennis McGee, made him a target for racial violence. When his fame peaked, the pressures of an unforgiving society closed in, culminating in the brutal attack that left him institutionalized and silenced for the remainder of his life.
