This weekend, director Ava DuVernay is enjoying the release of the brand new film A Wrinkle In Time.
Her good friend Ryan Coogler enjoyed that feeling three weeks ago following the release of Black Panther. To celebrate the accomplishment Coogler decided to write an open letter to his good friend for making history.
Ava is a pioneer. She makes the most distant dreams and ideas a reality. She made a show called “Queen Sugar” and mandated the use of female directors and key creatives a full two years before the great Frances McDormand shared with the world what an inclusion rider was. Ava is inclusion, equity and representation.
Ava is the past, present and future. She is all of these things, but sometimes I forget she is human. I was reminded of this a couple of years back, when I got the heartbreaking news that she had lost her father. I almost lost my father, and it nearly broke me in half. Ava, the warrior, weathered that loss while making “13th” to show everyone with a Netflix subscription that American slavery never ended — it had only morphed.
You can catch A Wrinkle In Time in theaters now. See the full open letter here.
Watch both Ebro in the Morning interviews with both directors below.