This ultra-talented filmmaker should be a household name in the urban community. He is the man who directed Halle Berry in her Academy Award-winning role in Monster’s Ball and then came back around and got his own Oscar nomination for the explosive tear-jerker of a picture, 2009’s Precious, which won the Toronto Film Festival’s 2009 People’s Choice Award. He was the director of choice to navigate the cultural landmines that would have come with directing a film about Dr. Martin Luther King that included his extramarital proclivities, but the project was killed before it got started, partially due to the outcry from the civil rights community.
