Ava DuVernay

Ava Marie DuVernay (born August 24, 1972) is an American filmmaker. She 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), DuVernay became the first black woman to be nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director, and also the first black female director to have her film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 2017, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for her film 13th (2016).

Quotes

 * Ignore the glass ceiling and do your work. If you’re focusing on the glass ceiling, focusing on what you don’t have, focusing on the limitations, then you will be limited.
 * So I came to realize that those dreams I'd been dreaming, what was the problem, what was so off, what was the error. It's cuz the dreams are too small. If your dream only includes you, it's too small. If that dream is just about the thing you want to accomplish, and you don't even know why you want it, I mean it's too small. It may take your attention, but you're not really winning. You may achieve it, but you're not growing from it. You're just going from thing to thing. It may look like success from the outside but if you don't even truly know how you're doing it, then your cause and effect will be off and you're not gonna be fully truly living your dreams.
 * speaking at SXSW 2015,