Roger Ross Williams

Williams began his career producing political satire for Comedy Central and Michael Moore’s Emmy Award-winning series TV Nation. He has also produced and directed numerous primetime specials for PBS, ABC, CBS, Sundance Channel and New York Times Television. He has won numerous awards for his TV work including a NAMIC Vision Award and the National Headliner for Best Human Interest Feature documentary.

Williams has directed a number of acclaimed films including Life, Animated, which won the Sundance Film Festival Directing Award, was nominated for an Academy Award and won three Emmys in 2018, including the award for Best Documentary. He also directed God Loves Uganda, which was shortlisted for an Academy Award and American Jail, which examined the U.S. prison system and premiered on CNN. Williams’ directed Traveling While Black, a VR documentary made for Facebook’s Oculus, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. His most recent film, The Apollo, a documentary about Harlem’s legendary Apollo Theater, was the opening night film of the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and he is currently in pre-production on his first narrative feature film for Amazon Studios.

Since 2016, Williams has been on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, serving as chair of the Documentary Branch and the documentary Diversity Committee. Williams serves on the Alumni Advisory Board of the Sundance Institute, the Advisory Board of Full Frame Festival, and the boards of the Tribeca Film Institute, Docubox Kenya, None On Record and the Zeitz Museum Of Contemporary Art Africa. He resides in New York and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

He started working in 1985 and has since worked for ABC News, NBC News, MSNBC, BBC, CNN and has produced work for Comedy Central, Food Network, TLC, VH1 He has directed prime-time reality (for ABC and CBS) and produced a documentary series for Discovery Networks and a lifestyle series: Sheila Bridges Designer Living, for Scripps Networks.

Roger Ross Williams (born September 16, 1962) is an American director, producer and writer and the first African American director to win an Oscar, with his short film Music by Prudence.