RaMell Ross, a photographer, cinematographer and filmmaker, won praise on the global film festival circuit last year for his highly original documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, a fragmented and abstract look at the lives of two African American families living in a deprived area of Alabama.

Ross, a first time filmmaker, who was once a promising basketball player before becoming a photographer and then a professor at Brown University, earned a Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival and a Gotham Award for Best Documentary in 2018 for the documentary, which is released January 18, 2019 in the UK.