Academy Award winner Barry Jenkins was born and raised in Miami, FL. A Florida State University graduate, 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. 

Jenkins along with playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his second feature Moonlight, which won Best Picture at both the Oscars and the Golden Globes (Drama). Moonlight won Best Picture and Director at the Gotham Awards and Best International Film by the British Independent Film Awards. In addition to The New York Film Critics Circle and The National Board of Review awarding Jenkins Best Director and LAFCA naming him Best Director and the film Best Picture, Jenkins is the recipient of a DGA Best Director nomination and the winner of the WGA Award for Best Original Screenplay. 

Upcoming projects include the Fall 2018 adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel If Beale Street Could Talk, for Annapurna Pictures and Plan B Entertainment, and an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead for television, which he will pen and direct.