Ava DuVernay

Ava DuVernay is an American filmmaker who turned to directing in her thirties, after an early interest in journalism and a career in public relations, and who founded her independent distribution company ARRAY in 2011. She made her feature debut with the hip hop documentary This Is the Life and released her first narrative feature, I Will Follow, in 2010. Her second feature, Middle of Nowhere, won Sundance's U.S. dramatic directing award in 2012, making her the first black woman to receive it. Selma (2014), her drama about Martin Luther King Jr., brought her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director, a first for an African-American woman, and a Best Picture Oscar nomination. Later credits include the Academy Award-nominated documentary 13th (2016), A Wrinkle in Time (2018), made for Disney, the television series Queen Sugar (2016), When They See Us (2019), and the biographical film Origin (2023).