Ava DuVernay

Ava DuVernay (born August 24, 1972, Long Beach, California, U.S.) American director, producer, and writer whose best-known works explore the African American experience.

DuVernay graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1995 with bachelor’s degrees in English and African American studies. After working for a few years in film publicity, she started her own company to market movies.

In 2008 DuVernay transitioned to writing, directing, and producing films. She first gained critical attention with the documentary This Is the Life (2008), about the creation of the hip-hop movement in Los Angeles in the 1990s. In 2010 DuVernay founded the African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement (now Array), which promotes women and people of colour in the film industry. The company distributed DuVernay’s first feature film, I Will Follow (2010), a drama exploring a woman’s grief after the death of a relative. Middle of Nowhere (2012) shows the daily life of a young woman whose husband is in jail. With that movie DuVernay became the first African American woman to win the best director award at the Sundance Film Festival.

The film that brought DuVernay to the attention of a broader audience base was the 2014 historical drama Selma. It chronicles the 1965 civil rights march led by Martin Luther King, Jr., that resulted in passage of the Voting Rights Act. Selma was critically acclaimed, and DuVernay became the first African American woman to receive a Golden Globe nomination for best director. In addition, the movie was nominated for an Academy Award for best picture. In 2016 DuVernay released the Oscar-nominated documentary 13th, an exploration of the American prison system and its racial inequities. She returned to feature films as director of the adventure fantasy A Wrinkle in Time (2018). It was based on the award-winning 1962 book by Madeleine L’Engle and featured a multicultural cast that included Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling.

DuVernay also worked on various television projects. She was especially known for creating and directing the miniseries When They See Us (2019). Based on actual events, it follows five Black teenagers who were wrongly convicted for a violent crime in New York City’s Central Park in 1989. She also created the TV series Queen Sugar (2016–22). The drama, set in Louisiana, delves into the lives of three siblings. In addition, Duvernay cocreated Naomi (2022), about an African American teenage superhero; she also cowrote the series.