RaMell Ross
American artist and filmmaker (born 1982)
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RaMell Ross is an American filmmaker. His directorial debut, Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018), earned him a Peabody Award, and nominations for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film and the Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. Ross directed and co-wrote the screenplay for the 2024 film adaptation of the novel The Nickel Boys (2019), for which he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director,[1][2][3] and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (shared with Joslyn Barnes).[4]
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RaMell Ross | |
|---|---|
Ross at the 2018 Montclair Film Festival | |
| Born | 1982 (age 43–44) Frankfurt, Germany |
| Education | |
| Occupations | Film director, photographer, professor |
| Website | https://www.ramellross.com |
Early life and education
Ross was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and raised in Fairfax, Virginia, where he attended Lake Braddock Secondary School.[5][6]
In 2005, Ross graduated from Georgetown University, where he majored in English and sociology and played on the Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team.[1][6] He later earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design.[6]
Career
In 2006, Ross moved to Ireland to work for Playing For Peace's Northern Ireland initiative. While in Ireland he played professional basketball for MDS Star of the Sea Belfast, a team in Ireland's SuperLeague North Division. It was here he would first get an interest in directing and video editing as he worked as an apprentice of the video editor for North Star Basketball.[7]
In 2009, Ross moved to Greensboro, Alabama for a position as a basketball coach and photography teacher.[8] These experiences inspired multiple collections of photographs and art installments inspired by black life in the American South.[9]
Filmmaker Magazine named Ross among "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in 2015. That year, he was a Sundance Institute New Frontier Artist in Residence at the MIT Media Lab.[10] He joined faculty of the Brown Arts Initiative at Brown University in 2016, where he currently serves as an assistant professor of visual art.[11] Soon after, he was awarded a two-year Mellon Gateway Fellowship.[12]
Ross' directorial debut, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, an experimental documentary about black life in Hale County, Alabama, premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.[13] He was awarded the Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the festival. The film went on to win a Peabody Award and in 2019 was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film and the Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking.[14]
Easter Snap, Ross' documentary short depicting five men preparing a hog to be butchered in a ritualistic fashion, debuted at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.[1][15]
The Ogden Museum of Southern Art presented a retrospective of Ross' artwork, titled Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body: The Work of RaMell Ross from October 2021 to March 2022. A book of Ross' work titled Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body was released in 2023.[9]
Nickel Boys, Ross' film adaptation of the Colson Whitehead novel The Nickel Boys, debuted at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2024.[16] The film opened the 2024 New York Film Festival.[17]
Filmography
| Year | Title | Notes | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Hale County This Morning, This Evening | Documentary film | [1] |
| 2019 | Easter Snap | Documentary short | [15] |
| 2024 | Nickel Boys | Narrative feature film | [17] |
Awards and nominations
Notes
- Shared with Joslyn Barnes and Su Kim
- Shared with Joslyn Barnes, Su Kim, and Lois Vossen
- Recognized as one of ten honorees
- Shared with Joslyn Barnes