Ava DuVernay

Ava Marie DuVernay (/ˈeɪvə ˌdjuːvərˈneɪ/; born August 24, 1972) is an American director, screenwriter, film marketer, and film distributor. At the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, DuVernay won the Best Director Prize for her second feature film Middle of Nowhere, becoming the first African-American woman to win the award. For her work in Selma (2014), DuVernay was the first black female director to be nominated for a Golden Globe Award. With Selma, she was also the first black female director to have her film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, though she was not nominated for Best Director. In 2017, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for her film 13th (2016). DuVernay's next film, A Wrinkle in Time, reportedly has a budget exceeding $100 million, making DuVernay the first black woman to direct a live-action film with a budget of that size. 2Early life DuVernay was born in Long Beach, California. She grew up in Lynwood, California (near Compton) and graduated in 1990 from Saint Joseph High School in Lakewood. At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), she was a double major in English and African-American studies. During her summer vacations, she would travel to the childhood home of her father, Murray Maye (which was not far from Selma, Alabama