Barry Jenkins

Barry Lamar Jenkins directed Moonlight — the film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2017 (after the most infamous envelope mix-up in Oscar history) and proved that a quiet, poetic story about a queer Black boy growing up poor in Miami could be recognized as the best film in the world. Made for $1.5 million, Moonlight was a radical act of tenderness in an industry that rarely affords Black men the right to be vulnerable.

Born in Miami in 1979, Jenkins grew up in Liberty City, one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in America — the same community depicted in Moonlight. He attended Florida State University's film school and made his first feature, Medicine for Melancholy (2008), for $15,000. The film premiered at South by Southwest but didn't lead to immediate Hollywood opportunities. Jenkins spent years in the wilderness before Moonlight.

Moonlight, based on Tarell Alvin McCraney's play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, won three Academy Awards and established Jenkins as one of the most lyrical filmmakers alive. He followed it with If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), an adaptation of James Baldwin's novel that earned Regina King the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. His series The Underground Railroad for Amazon was an ambitious adaptation of Colson Whitehead's novel. Jenkins brings a painter's eye and a poet's heart to every project.