ZORA and The Blackness present Moonrakers 2020
Ava DuVernay Is The Visionary Filmmaking Needs
This innovative director has a talent for seeking — and achieving — justice through her filmmaking
Published in
4 min readOct 8, 2019
By Aunjanue Ellis as told to Erika Alexander
Emmy-nominated actress Aunjanue Ellis sat down with Color Farm’s Erika Alexander to talk about Moonraker Ava DuVernay. DuVernay directed Ellis in the role of Sharonne Salaam, mother of Yusef Salaam, in the searing Netflix series about the Exonerated Five When They See Us.
Erika Alexander: What’s your origin story with Ava? Did you know her before you worked with her?
Aunjanue Ellis: I didn’t know Ava. I just knew of her through her work and reputation. I was having a call and my representatives were telling me that this other job was not going to work out. But they were like, “Well, maybe this other thing with the Central Park Five will happen.” It was just so very pie-in-the-sky. Actually, a couple of weeks before that, I was having a pity party that…
