The Women Directors of QUEEN SUGAR
As of 2018, the Twenty-Five (25) women who have directed the OWN television series ‘Queen Sugar’.
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- Director
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Kat Candler was born in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. She is a producer and director, known for Hellion (2014), Queen Sugar (2016) and Sorry for Your Loss (2018).- Director
- Producer
Director and producer Neema Barnette has engaged audiences with a body of socially compelling and politically charged work that defies the narrow stereotypes of African-Americans usually depicted in entertainment. Working in both television and film, Barnette has earned the respect of peers and critics alike by winning countless accolades.
Barnette recently directed the feature Woman Thou Art Loosed On the 7th Day. The film stars Pam Grier, Blair Underwood, Nicole Jarbari and Sharon Leal and is produced by Neema, Bishop TD Jakes of Jumpin the Broom and Sparkle, and Code Black Entertainment. The movie is a dramatic thriller that explores problems in modern day marriage and the abduction of a little girl. The AMC theater chain theatrically released the feature on April 13th on 129 screens. It premiered as number one for per screen average opening weekend, beating out The Hunger Games. In January 2013, the film was one of three pictures nominated for "Best Independent Feature" by the NAACP Image Awards.
Known for her creativity, in 2010 Neema directed a gospel musical film, Heaven Ain't Hard to Find, starring Kim Whitley, Cliff Powell & Reed McCants. Neema developed a new format for gospel plays by shooting actual locations and combined theater with cinema. The picture aired on paid preview, HBO and BET. In 2008, Neema executive produced Cuttin Da Mustard, an independent feature written and directed by Reed McCants. The film is a comedy but deals seriously with young adult illiteracy and stars Brandon T. Jackson, Sinbad, Charles Dutton, Adrienne Bailon, Keisha Knight Pulliman, Lil Zane, Jonathan Wesley and Chico Benyman. Barnette began 2007 by directing the film My Super Sweet 16: the Movie for MTV Paramount. The picture stars rockers Aly & AJ and singer Ciara. In July 2006, Neema directed the feature film All You've Got for MTV Paramount Films starring Laila Ali and Faizon Love.
For the mini-series Miracle's Boys produced in 2005 for the Noggin network by filmmaker Spike Lee, Neema was the only female director invited to join Spike's directing team along with Laver Burton, Ernest Dickerson and Bill Duke. The project aired in February of that year to rave reviews.
Barnette, a native of Harlem New York, began her career as a stage actress while attending New York's High School for the Performing Arts. After earning a BA from The City College of New York, and an MFA from NYU School of The Arts, she subsequently took a position in Vinnette Carroll's prestigious "Urban Arts Corps" as an actress and directed inner city kids in plays designed to enhance their reading skills. It was then that Neema fell in love with directing. At twenty-one, Neema made her directing debut at Joseph Papps' Public Theatre with THE BLUE JOURNEY by Oyamo. Finding cinema in her work, Papp suggested she enroll in a Third World Cinema program. After graduating from the program, Neema produced an after school special titled TO BE A MAN for ABC Television, for which she won her first Emmy Award.
This award would launch the director onto a path of award-winning work and industry achievement. After graduating from CCNY in 1985, Barnette was awarded acceptance into the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women, where she wrote, produced and directed her first film, Sky Captain, a surrealistic fantasy drama about an urban Peter Pan from the Bronx who was suicidal. This incredibly unique work earned the notice of many among the Hollywood film and television community, and led to One More Hurdle an NBC dramatic special for which Barnette won her first NAACP Image Award. Barnette also lent her vision to a network documentary on domestic violence for NBC, The Silent Crime, which received four local Emmy nominations and won an American Women in Radio & Television award for directing.
In 1986, with a flair for the lighthearted as well as the dramatic, Barnette directed an episode of What's Happening Now which earned her an NAACP image awards nomination. More significantly, the job made Neema the first African American woman in the history of television to direct a sitcom. This critical breakthrough resulted in subsequent directing stints on Hooperman, the royal family, china beach (Peabody award), franks place (Emmy award), the sinbad show, diagnosis murder, multiples of a different world, the Cosby show (Emmy award) and the Cosby mysteries (Emmy nomination, Peabody nomination), and seventh heaven and the Gilmore girls.
On the heels of work on an episode of Cosby, Barnette mounted a new play by Richard Wesley at the Manhattan Theatre Club, The Talented Tenth. The success of the workshop production propelled Lynn Meadows to open her off Broadway season with the play with Neema as director. That year the play won 10 Adelco Awards, including Best Director. Also that year, Barnette won an International Monitor Award for Best Director for The Cosby Show episode, 'The Day the Spores Landed.'
Barnette went on to direct several other movies for television, most noteworthy among them, ZORA IS MY NAME (American Playhouse production starring Ruby Dee which won a Lilly Award for Exceptional Representation of African American Images in Film); DIFFERENT WORLDS: AN INTERRACIAL LOVE STORY (four Daytime Emmy nominations, Directors Guild of America nomination for Best Directing); BETTER OFF DEAD (Lifetime Television production starring Mare Winningham and Tyra Ferrell which earned a Cable Ace award nomination); RUN FOR THE DREAM: THE GAIL DEVERS STORY (Showtime Network production starring Lou Gossett Jr. which earned Barnette her fifth NAACP Image Award nomination); SCATTERED DREAMS (for CBS Television Network, starring Tyne Daly and Alicia Silverstone); SIN & REDEMPTION (also for CBS; executive produced by Dick Berg), among others.
The critical acclaim and success of the pictures catapulted Neema into the ranks of a handful of sought after directors whose telefilms brought in high ratings. It also garnered the attention of Frank Price, then chairman of Sony Pictures, who gave Barnette a two-year housekeeping deal to produce, write and direct Listen for the Fig Tree, an original screenplay. This was the second time Neema made history. She became the first African American woman to receive a production DEAL at a major motion picture studio. Neema's three-year deal included developing film and television projects for the studio.
In September of 2000, Barnette signed on as the director and producer of the feature film Civil Brand starring LisaRaye, Mos Def, Da Brat, N'Bushe Wright, Monica Calhoun, MC Light, Reed McCants and Clifton Powell. The film was shot in fifteen days and was completed in May 2002. In June 2002, the film won the Blockbuster Award at the Black Audience Film Festival in Miami. In August 2002, CIVIL BRAND also won the Audience Award and was given a Special Jury Award at the Urban World Film Festival in New York City. The American Film Institute's prestigious International Film Festival selected Civil Brand in November of 2002 in Los Angeles where it was featured in the American Directions division. Also in November of 2002, Civil Brand was chosen as an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and is featured in their American Spectrum Division. The film opened for the Pan African International film festival and won the Festival Award.
Producer Gilbert Cates hired Barnette as a Professor at UCLA's School of Film & Television in 1999, where she teaches a master filmmaking class to the under graduate film students and has created a syllabus and teaches for the MFA Theater department. Neema has been teaching at UCLA for fifteen years and still teaches there. In September of 2002 Neema also became an associate professor at the USC School of Cinema where she taught film production, television development and directing to undergraduate students for seven years while continuing her professional directing and producing career.
In February 2004, Women in Film honored Neema along with Diane Carroll and Delores Robinson at their Breaking Ground Breakfast in Beverly Hills. On November 30, 2009 in New York City, Congressman Charles Rangel declared Neema Barnette Day in her hometown of Harlem. Neema has been featured in American Film, Dga Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Vogue, Business Weekly, Hollywood Reporter and other periodicals.
Barnette serves on the Executive Board of the DGA African American Steering Committee and is a member of The Black Filmmakers Foundation since its inception. She is also an active AFI alumnus and serves on the panel of the AFI Independent Film committee. Barnette has operated her own production company, Hope Entertainment since 1990 and is Executive Director of Live Theatre Gang, an urban theatre and performance company. She lives between New York and Los Angeles with her husband Reed R. McCants and their daughter.- Director
- Producer
- Editor
So Yong Kim was born in 1968 in Pusan, South Korea. So Yong is a director and producer, known for Treeless Mountain (2008), In Between Days (2006) and For Ellen (2012).- Director
- Actress
- Producer
Born and raised in New York, Mahoney developed her debut feature film "Yelling to the Sky" through the Directors and Screenwriters Sundance Institute Labs and was named an Auerbach Fellow, Annenberg Fellow, Cinereach Fellow, Maryland Fellow, Tribeca Fellow and IFP Narrative Lab fellow. She was named one of, "25 New Faces of Independent Film" by Filmmaker Magazine, one of ShadowAndAct/IndieWire's "Filmmakers to Watch" and one of, "3 Filmmakers to Watch" in Elle Magazine's, Women In Hollywood issue.
Yelling to the Sky, World Premiered in 'Main Competition' at the Berlin Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Golden Bear.
In 2018, JJ Abrams hired Victoria to direct second unit for him on Star Wars Ep IX "The Rise of Skywalker".
Victoria is an AMPAS and BAFTA member.- Director
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Salli Richardson-Whitfield is a 30-year industry veteran. She has been featured in 20+ major motion pictures and has starred opposite a number of Hollywood's top actors, including Samuel L. Jackson in 'The Great White Hype', Denzel Washington in 'Antwone Fisher', and Will Smith in 'I Am Legend'. On television, Salli starred in the long-running SYFY network hit series 'Eureka' as well as three seasons of 'Stitchers' on Freeform. Her acting resume includes dozens of popular series, highlighted by 'Criminal Minds', 'Bones', 'House MD', 'NYPD Blue', 'Castle', 'Being Mary Jane', and 'CSI: Miami'.
Changing gears to a role behind the camera, Salli has established herself as a director and producer. Ava DuVernay was one of the first to recognize Salli's skill as director, offering Salli two back-to-back episodes of the first season of 'Queen Sugar'. Her now incredibly extensive directing resume includes Amazon's 'Wheel of Time', Hulu's 'Reprisal', Apple's 'See', Netflix's 'Dear White People', 'Luke Cage', 'The Punisher', and 'Altered Carbon', Starz' 'American Gods' and 'Survivor's Remorse', Showtime's 'The Chi', ABC's 'Scandal' and 'Black-ish', Fox's 'Lethal Weapon', Freeform's 'Shadowhunters', BET's 'Rebel', SYFY'S 'The Magicians', 'Eureka', 'Black Lightening', and The CW's 'All American'.
Salli's work is award-nominated for a NAACP Award for Outstanding Directing In A Drama Series for 'Luke Cage', for a Hugo Award nomination for her work on 'Wheel of Time', and for a Black Reel Award for directing 'Black-ish'. She won the AAFCA Best TV Directing Award for her work on HBO's 'The Gilded Age'. Most recently, she won two The Gracies' 2024 awards for Director - Drama ('Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty') and Producer - Entertainment ('The Gilded Age').
Salli's successful run as a director and producer was punctuated by the announcement of her first Overall Deal with HBO for whom she Directed and Executive Produced Julian Fellowes' period drama series 'The Gilded Age' and also directed the final two episodes of the first season of Adam McKay's critically acclaimed series 'Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty'. Salli has since renewed her relationship with HBO and HBO Max with a long-term Overall Deal. Since then, she has served as Executive Producer on season two of 'Winning Time' and season two of 'The Gilded Age', to much success. She is an Executive Producer and Director on HBO's Brad Ingelsby Task Force Limited Series starring Mark Ruffalo.- Producer
- Director
- Writer
A native of Tupelo, Mississippi, Tina Mabry graduated from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts with an MFA in Film Production in 2005. A true hyphenate, Tina is a writer, director, and producer for television and film. She is a writer and producer for Fox's upcoming series, Proven Innocent. She was a co-producer, writer, and director for the second season of USA's hit drama Queen of the South. Tina was also a producer, writer, and director on OWN's Queen Sugar created by Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey. Tina produced and directed Melody 1963: Love Has To Win, an American Girl special for Amazon Kids. The special earned Tina a DGA Award and a NAACP Award. Tina's other television directing credits include Netflix's Dear White People, ABC's The Mayor, HBO's Insecure, FX's Pose, and STARZ's Power.
In film, Tina began her career co-writing the feature screenplay Itty Bitty Titty Committee directed by Jamie Babbit. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2007 and won Best Feature Narrative at South by Southwest Film and Music Festival. Tina went on to write and direct her first feature film, Mississippi Damned, which garnered an impressive thirteen awards for participation in fifteen film festivals including awards for Best Feature Film and Best Screenplay at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2009. The film premiered on Showtime Networks in February 2011. Tina has worked on a number of short films, including her first film, the award-winning Brooklyn's Bridge to Jordan, which screened at more than fifty film festivals worldwide and aired on Showtime Networks, LOGO and Centric. Tina is the writer for Madison Wells Media's Code of Silence.
Tina was named among the "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in Filmmaker Magazine in July of 2009 and was recognized by Out Magazine as one of the most inspirational and outstanding people of the year. She was featured in the Advocate magazine as part of their "Top Forty Under 40" issue, which features the top 40 individuals who are raising the bar in their respective fields. Tina has participated in several talent development programs including Film Independent's Writers' Lab, Tribeca Film Institute's All Access, and Sundance's Screenwriters Intensive.- Director
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Cheryl Dunye was born on 13 May 1966 in Liberia. She is a director and producer, known for The Watermelon Woman (1996), The Owls (2010) and Mommy Is Coming (2012).- Director
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- Producer
Aurora was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a queer, Indigenous-identified Chicana. Guerrero wrote and directed "Mosquita Y Mari"; her debut narrative feature film premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. In 2017, Guerrero directed her first episode of television on Ava Duvernay's critically acclaimed drama, "Queen Sugar." Since then, she has directed "Greenleaf","The Red Line," "Little America," "13 Reasons Why" , and Duvernay's latest, "Cherish The Day."- Writer
- Producer
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A director, producer, writer, marketer and film distributor, Ava DuVernay made her feature film debut with the documentary This is the Life (2008), a history on hip hop movement that flourished in Los Angeles in the 1990's. This was followed by series of television music documentaries which included My Mic Sounds Nice (2010) which aired on BET.
DuVernay's first narrative feature film, I Will Follow (2010), secured her the African-American Film Critics Association award for best screenplay. Her follow-up, Middle of Nowhere (2012) won the Best Director Prize at the 2012 Sundance film festival, making her the first African-American woman to receive the award.- Producer
- Director
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Maryam Keshavarz was born in 1975 in New York City, New York, USA. Maryam is a producer and director, known for The Persian Version (2023) and Circumstance (2011).- Director
- Producer
- Producer
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- Director
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Thirty-one years ago, filmmaker Julie Dash broke racial and gender boundaries with her Sundance award-winning film (Best Cinematography) Daughters of the Dust. She became the first African American woman to have a wide theatrical release of her feature film. The Library of Congress placed Daughters of the Dust and her UCLA MFA senior thesis Illusions in the National Film Registry. These two films join a select group of American films preserved and protected as national treasures by the Librarian of Congress. Dash recently designed two rooms for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and VOGUE, In American: An Anthology of Fashion, featured at the NYC Met Gala 2022.- Director
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Patricia Cardoso is an award-winning director who has directed a wide range of films and episodes for the screen. Her first feature film, REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES, was a box office and critical success and has become a landmark in US cinema. Cardoso's directing credits include episodes of THE SOCIETY, QUEEN SUGAR, WILL TRENT, THE WATCHFUL EYE, TALES OF THE CITY, the pilot for HARLAN COBEN'S SHELTER for Amazon Prime, and the feature EL PASEO DE TERESA -the largest box office for a woman director in Colombia. Cardoso is an anthropologist, an archaeologist, and a Fulbright scholar. Cardoso's anthropological approach to directing guides her film and television work. Cardoso was the first Latinx woman director to have a film included in the Library of Congress's National Film Registry and to win a Student Academy Award® and a Sundance Audience Award. She is a graduate of UCLA's film school and was director of Sundance's Latin American program for five years. In addition to her work as a filmmaker, Cardoso is a professor at UC Riverside and previously taught at USC and UCLA. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, The British Film Academy, the Television Academy, and the Directors Guild of America.- Director
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Lauren Wolkstein is an American film director, writer, and editor. She is known for directing the 2017 drama-thriller The Strange Ones with Christopher Radcliff and serving on the directorial team for the third season of Ava DuVernay's Queen Sugar, which she followed with a Producing Director role in the fifth season. A 2017-2018 Women at Sundance fellow, Wolkstein has been named a "New Face of Independent Film" by Filmmaker Magazine. Her films have screened at several festivals, including Cannes, Outfest, Sundance, and SXSW.- Director
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Shaz Bennett's debut feature film "Alaska is a Drag", that she wrote & directed was highlighted as one to watch in Vogue, Filmmaker and OUT magazine. Winning best feature film and Jury awards for Best Director at New Filmmakers LA, Leeds, Chattanooga, Urbanworld and the Smithsonian African American Film Festival among others. Shaz Bennett was one of eight women selected into the prestigious AFI Directing Workshop for Women and winner of the New York Women in Film & Television's Nancy Malone Award.
Bennett's first television writing job was on "The Glades" on A&E. She later joined the writing team for "UnREAL" on Lifetime and produced the popular spin off "The Faith Diaries". Shaz writes on the police procedural "Bosch" on Amazon and directed on Ava Duvernay's "Queen Sugar" on the Oprah Winfrey Network, and directed episodes of "Billions" on Showtime and "Animal Kingdom" on TNT and "Bosch" on Amazon.- Director
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- Editorial Department
Christina Choe is an American filmmaker whose 2011 short film, I am John Wayne, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Slamdance Film Festival and screened at dozens of festivals around the world. Choe's documentary series Welcome to the DPRK, a personal portrait of North Korea, was recently acquired and released by First Look Media. Her feature film debut, Nancy, a psychodrama starring Andrea Riseborough, J. Smith-Cameron, Ann Dowd, John Leguizamo, and Steve Buscemi, recently had its world premiere in the US Dramatic Competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, where Choe was awarded the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. Here Choe discusses the various hurdles she faced in getting a feature film made, the people skills involved in working with actors, and the irrational amounts of perseverance generally necessary to make a movie.- Writer
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Nijla Mumin is known for Jinn (2018), Swagger (2021) and Jessica's Mom (or the Science of Triangles) (2012).- Director
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Rachel Raimist is known for Nobody Knows My Name (1999), The Spiderwick Chronicles (2024) and Roswell, New Mexico (2019).- Director
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Ayoka Chenzira is an award-winning filmmaker and a recognized pioneer in Black independent cinema. She is part of a generation of African American filmmakers who helped create a genre of filmmaking now identified as Black independent cinema. Her distinctive body of work spans fiction, documentary, animation, performance, experimental narratives, interactive cinema and television. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) and is one of the first African American women to write, produce and direct a 35mm feature film, Alma's Rainbow (developed at Sundance Institute), and noted in Billboard Magazine's top forty home video sales list. She is considered the first African American woman animator with her animated satire, Hair Piece: a film for nappyheaded people and later Zajota and the Boogie Spirit. Hair Piece was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2018. There have been many international retrospectives of Ayoka's films and several of her them are in permanent collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Ayoka's episode of Queen Sugar was nominated for a 2019 NAACP Image Award. She directed an episode of Greenleaf (407 - Reunited) that will air in the spring of 2019.