A.V. Rockwell

A. V. Rockwell (born Alina Victoria Rockwell ) is an American film director. In 2023, she made her directorial feature film debut with the film A Thousand and One, which gave her a Gotham Award, a Black Reel Award, an Independent Spirit Award, a Director's Guild nomination, and nominations at the NAACP Image Awards.

Early life and education Rockwell was born and raised in Queens, New York, to parents from Jamaica. and attended film school at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. One of her early inspirations to pursue film came from studying European cinema while studying in Paris.

Career One of Rockwell's early works was the series Open City Mixtape, which followed young people's stories in New York City, and was shot in black-and-white. Subsequently, Rockwell worked with Alicia Keys on the music-focused music short film The Gospel for Keys' sixth studio album, Here. The work gave her a silver Clio Awards.

In 2018, Rockwell released her short film Feathers, which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival. For Feathers, Rockwell was named the grand-prize winner of the Tribeca Film Institute and CHANEL’s Through Her Lens grant; the film was selected as part of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was then acquired by Fox Searchlight Pictures for their Searchlight Shorts collection.

Rockwell (right) and actress Teyana Taylor promote A Thousand and One. The film received universal acclaim.

In 2023, Rockwell made her feature debut with A Thousand and One, starring Teyana Taylor and set in Harlem, New York, between 1994 and 2005. The film debuted at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. She has cited Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee as influences, as well as the films Goodfellas, Crooklyn, Do the Right Thing, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Z, The Battle of Algiers, and Seven Beauties.

Over her career, Rockwell has been named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, was a 2018 Young Guns award winner, She won the Breakthrough Director Award at the 2023 Gotham Awards for her work in her feature film directorial debut A Thousand and One.

Filmography

Accolades