Euzhan Palcy

Born in Mar­tinique, Euzhan Pal­cy stud­ied at ENS Louis-Lumière. In 1983, her debut fea­ture, Sug­ar Cane Alley, won the Sil­ver Lion at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val and the César for Best First Work. Build­ing on these suc­cess­es, Robert Red­ford invit­ed her to par­tic­i­pate in the Sun­dance Labs, where she devel­oped A Dry White Sea­son. The film was released in the­aters in 1989, star­ring Don­ald Suther­land, Zakes Mokae, Susan Saran­don and Mar­lon Bran­do, who earned his final Oscar nom­i­na­tion for his per­for­mance. With its uncom­pro­mis­ing denun­ci­a­tion of apartheid, the film proved to be one of the major works of her career and was admired by Nel­son Man­dela. Her fil­mog­ra­phy includes the fan­ta­sy musi­cal Siméon (1992), Ruby Bridges (1998) and The Killing Yard (2001), and the doc­u­men­taries Aimé Césaire: A Voice for His­to­ry (1994), ded­i­cat­ed to her spir­i­tu­al fore­fa­ther, and Par­cours de dis­si­dents (2005). A pio­neer all through­out her career, A Dry White Sea­son made her the first Black woman to direct a film for a major Hol­ly­wood stu­dio, MGM, and she received an hon­orary Oscar in 2022.