Cast Detail: Barry Jenkins

Academy Award winner Barry Jenkins’ feature film debut, Medicine for Melancholy, was hailed as one of the best films of 2009 by The New York Times and received several Independent Spirit and Gotham Award nominations. In 2019, along with playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, Jenkins received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his second feature, the Academy Award and Golden Globe-winning Best Picture Moonlight. As well as earning eight Academy Award nominations, ten Broadcast Critics Choice Awards nominations, six Golden Globe nominations and four BAFTA nominations, Moonlight won Best Picture and Director at the Gotham Awards and Best International Film by the British Independent Film Awards. In addition to NYFCC and NBR awarding Jenkins Best Director and LAFCA naming him Best Director and the film Best Picture, Jenkins received a DGA Best Director nomination and won the WGA Award for Best Original Screenplay. His third feature, the adap

Academy Award winner Barry Jenkins’ feature film debut, Medicine for Melancholy, was hailed as one of the best films of 2009 by The New York Times and received several Independent Spirit and Gotham Award nominations. In 2019, along with playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, Jenkins received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his second feature, the Academy Award and Golden Globe-winning Best Picture Moonlight. As well as earning eight Academy Award nominations, ten Broadcast Critics Choice Awards nominations, six Golden Globe nominations and four BAFTA nominations, Moonlight won Best Picture and Director at the Gotham Awards and Best International Film by the British Independent Film Awards. In addition to NYFCC and NBR awarding Jenkins Best Director and LAFCA naming him Best Director and the film Best Picture, Jenkins received a DGA Best Director nomination and won the WGA Award for Best Original Screenplay. His third feature, the adaptation of James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk, went on to receive three Academy Award nominations and won Best Picture at the Independent Spirit Awards. Jenkins also received the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director. Jenkins’ next feature film projects include a follow-up to The Lion King for Walt Disney Studios as well as a biopic of famed choreographer Alvin Ailey for Searchlight Pictures.

For television, Jenkins directed an episode in the first season of the Netflix Original Series Dear White People. His next television project is an adaptation of National Book Award winner Colson Whitehead’s Amazon Original series The Underground Railroad for Amazon. Jenkins has directed all episodes and written a number of the screenplays. Other upcoming work includes a script based on the life of the first American female Olympic boxing champ Clarissa “T-Rex” Shields, as well as an adaptation of Netflix’s original documentary, Virunga, about the battle to save the Congo’s mountain gorilla population.