RaMell Ross

RaMell Ross is an American filmmaker. His directorial debut, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, earned him a Peabody Award, and nominations for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film and the Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. Ross directed and co-wrote the screenplay for the 2024 film adaptation of the novel The Nickel Boys (2019), for which he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (shared with Joslyn Barnes).

Early life and education Ross was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and raised in Fairfax, Virginia, where he attended Lake Braddock Secondary School.

In 2005, Ross graduated from Georgetown University, where he majored in English and sociology and played on the Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team.

In 2009, Ross moved to Greensboro, Alabama for a position as a basketball coach and photography teacher. These experiences inspired multiple collections of photographs and art installments inspired by black life in the American South.

Filmmaker Magazine named Ross among "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in 2015. That year, he was a Sundance Institute New Frontier Artist in Residence at the MIT Media Lab. He joined faculty of the Brown Arts Initiative at Brown University in 2016, where he currently serves as an assistant professor of visual art. Soon after, he was awarded a two-year Mellon Gateway Fellowship.

Ross' directorial debut, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, an experimental documentary about black life in Hale County, Alabama, premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. He was awarded the Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the festival. The film went on to win a Peabody Award and in 2019 was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film and the Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking.

Easter Snap, Ross' documentary short depicting five men preparing a hog to be butchered in a ritualistic fashion, debuted at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

The Ogden Museum of Southern Art presented a retrospective of Ross' artwork, titled Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body: The Work of RaMell Ross from October 2021 to March 2022. A book of Ross' work titled Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body was released in 2023. The film opened the 2024 New York Film Festival.

Filmography Year Title Notes Ref. 2018 Hale County This Morning, This Evening Documentary film New York Film Critics Circle Best Director Astras Film Awards Best Adapted Screenplay Boston Society of Film Critics Best Adapted Screenplay Chicago Film Critics Association Best Director Best Adapted Screenplay Breakthrough Filmmaker Toronto Film Critics Association Best Director Best Screenplay Stockholm Film FestivalBest FilmWon 2025 National Society of Film Critics Best Director Georgia Film Critics Association Best Director Best Adapted Screenplay Breakthrough Award Satellite Awards Best Director Best Adapted Screenplay London Film Critics' Circle Director of the Year Critics' Choice Awards Best Director Best Adapted Screenplay Directors Guild of America Awards First-Time Theatrical Feature Film Writers Guild of America Awards Best Adapted Screenplay Paul Selvin Award British Academy Film Awards Best Adapted Screenplay Black Reel Awards Outstanding Director Outstanding Screenplay Outstanding Emerging Director Outstanding First Screenplay NAACP Image Awards Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture USC Scripter Awards Film Academy Awards Best Adapted Screenplay