Yance Ford is a renowned director and producer based in New York City, whose debut film Strong Island garnered widespread critical acclaim and numerous awards.
Strong Island, a documentary film, won the 2017 Sundance U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award, the Gotham Award for Best Documentary, and the Black Film Critics Circle Award for Best Doc.
Strong Island was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 90th Academy Awards, making history as the first transgender director nominated for an Oscar.
Additionally, Strong Island won the Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Film and was nominated for a George Foster Peabody Award.
At the 2018 Cinema Eye Honors, Ford made history by becoming the first nominee ever to win Best Direction, Best Debut, and Best Feature.
Ford's work can be seen in various TV series, including Pride on FX, Trial by Media on Netflix, The Me You Can't See on Apple+, Work In Progress on Showtime, and The Color of Care on The Smithsonian Channel.
Ford was also a staff writer in the HBO mini-room for adapting the bestselling novel The Vanishing Half.
Prior to his current work, Ford was a Series Producer at the documentary anthology series POV, where his curatorial work garnered 5 Emmy Awards and 16 Emmy nominations.
Ford is a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Sundance Institute Fellow, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019.
His work has been supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, Creative Capital, Cinereach, The Ford Foundation, and others.
Ford is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors Guild of America.
His next feature film is a Netflix Original documentary set for release in 2023.
