AFCI Locations Show

Ava DuVernay made her feature directorial debut with the critically-acclaimed 2008 hip hop documentary, "This is The Life."  Winner of Audience Awards in Toronto, Los Angeles and Seattle, the LA WEEKLY raved, "This is The Life vaults into the upper echelons of must-see hip-hop documentaries." In 2010, she wrote, produced and directed the narrative feature, "I Will Follow", starring Salli Richardson-Whitfield. Released theatrically in 2011, the family drama was hailed by critic Roger Ebert as "... one of the best films I've seen about the loss of a loved one." DuVernay directed and produced three network music documentaries in 2010. My Mic Sounds Nice is a definitive history of female hip hop artists. Essence Music Festival 2010 is a two-hour concert film chronicling the nation's largest annual African-American entertainment gathering. Faith Through the Storm is a documentary about black women Katrina survivors.  Each film aired on BET and TV One respectively.

Ava is blazing a trail for African American women in Hollywood. At 27, she founded what is now DVA Media + Marketing, which has been involved in more than 100 television and film projects. In 2008, the UCLA graduate directed a feature film for the first time. It was the multiple award-winning This Is The Life, a documentary about Los Angeles hip-hop culture. She also directed and wrote My Mic Sounds Nice: A Truth About Women in Hip-Hop, which premiered on BET in August 2010 as the network’s first original music documentary. In 2012, her film Middle of Nowhere played in U.S. Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival and garnered the Best Director Award for DuVernay, the first African-American to ever win the prize.