Yance Ford

Yance Ford is an Oscar nominated director and producer based in New York City. His debut film Strong Island was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 90th Academy Awards where Ford made history as the first openly transgender director nominated for the Oscar.

Strong Island received the Gotham Award for Best Documentary, the DocFest Tim Hetherington Award, the Full Frame Filmmaker, & Charles E. Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award and the Black Film Critics Circle Award for Best Documentary. Strong Island premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival winning a U.S.Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling.

He received the IDA Emerging Filmmaker Award, was nominated for a George Foster Peabody Award and at the 11th Annual Cinema Eye Honors became the first nominee ever to win for Best Direction and Best Debut and Best Feature. Strong Island launched globally on Netflix in September.

Ford is a Sundance Institute and MacDowell Colony Fellow and featured in Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. As a former Series Producer at POV, his curatorial work garnered over 5 Emmy Awards and 16 Emmy nominations.

The Root named Yance Ford among the 100 most influential African Americans of 2017 and recently he became a Sundance Institute Art of Non-Fiction grantee for an untitled film currently in development. He is represented by ICM Partners.