I love community, I love to be around other people. I love to be around other people when everyone’s feeling good and doing their best. Not to just be the only one in the room that’s shining. Ava DuVernay Read Quote
Queen Sugar’ is a drama about family. It’s something that allows us to be ourselves and see the ways that we interact with our own families. Ava DuVernay Read Quote
The studios aren’t lining up to make films about black protagonists, black people being autonomous and independent. Ava DuVernay Read Quote
I like silence. Aesthetically, I feel strangled by the fast cutting and a wall of sound. And I think showing black people thinking onscreen is radical. Ava DuVernay Read Quote
You see women struggling to keep it all together while a loved one is in jail. But we don’t hear about them or their struggles in a way that resonates with others. Their stories are so compelling. It’s as if they are in their own little world and no one else sees them. Ava DuVernay Read Quote
All black women aren’t sassy, loud, difficult, or subservient. We are, in fact, very complex and very diverse, living very complex and diverse lives. That point cannot be made enough. Ava DuVernay Read Quote
To win Best Director at Sundance was beyond anything I could have imagined for myself. It’s still an incredible feeling to know I won. But as happy as I am about winning, I also know many other women of color have directed amazing films over the years that were equally deserving and didn’t win. Ava DuVernay Read Quote
My next project is ‘Venus Vs,’ which is a documentary that follows tennis star Venus Williams and her effort to get equal-award pay for women at Wimbledon. Most people don’t realize that Venus fought for years to make sure women and men winners of that tennis championship received the same amount in award money. Ava DuVernay Read Quote
Filmmakers need to realize that their job isn’t done when they lock picture. We must see our films through. Ava DuVernay Read Quote
As long as you’re in an environment where the worth of the project isn’t based on the project but what its predecessors did, it’s not truly inclusive. Ava DuVernay Read Quote
