Cinetic Media Signs Filmmaker Roger Ross Williams

The Story

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams has inked with Cinetic Media.

Williams is an Oscar, Emmy and Peabody award-winning director, producer, writer, and the first African-American director to win an Academy Award with his short film Music By Prudence. He was awarded the lifetime achievement award from the International Documentary Association, The San Francisco Film Society, The Miami Film Festival, and the Maverick Award from the Woodstock Film Festival. He also was awarded an honorary doctorate from Lafayette College.

Williams documentary work includes Life, Animated, which won the Sundance Film Festival Directing Award, three Emmy’s, and was nominated for an Academy Award, God Loves Uganda, which was shortlisted for an Academy Award, The Apollo which won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Documentary, Stamped From The Beginning for Netflix; The 1619 Project which won the Primetime Emmy for nonfiction series, and The Supermodels for Apple TV+.

Williams first narrative feature, Cassandro, premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and was subsequently released globally by Amazon Prime Video. The pic starred Gael Garcia Bernal in the title role as the ”exotico” character created by Saúl Armendáriz,a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso who rose to international stardom.

Williams is currently working on his next project, the narrative feature, Strange Arrivals, starring Oscar nominee Demi Moore and 2x Oscar nominee Colman Domingo.

The filmmaker currently sits on the board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences representing the documentary Branch.

Original report

Deadline

Read full story

Cookie Preferences

We believe privacy is a right, not a trade-off. Choose exactly what you're comfortable with. You can change these any time. Full privacy policy.

Essential Always on

Required for the site to function

Session management, security tokens, login state, and your cookie preference itself. These cannot be turned off. No personal data is shared with third parties.

Analytics Optional

Helps us understand what content you enjoy

We use anonymised analytics (e.g. Google Analytics) to see which articles perform well, how long people spend reading, and where traffic comes from. This helps us write better content. Your IP address is anonymised and no data is sold.

Personalisation Optional

Remembers your preferences across visits

Remembers your reading preferences and recently read articles so we can surface relevant content. All data stays in your browser — nothing is sent to our servers.

Advertising Optional

Used to show relevant ads that support the site

Allows advertising partners to show you ads based on your interests. If you decline, you'll still see ads but they won't be tailored to you. We work with Google AdSense and similar networks. You can opt out globally at youronlinechoices.eu.