Melina Matsoukas

Melina Matsoukas (born January 14, 1981) is an American music video, film, commercial and television director. She is a two-time Grammy Award winner and four-time MTV Video Music Awards winner for her "We Found Love" and "Formation" music videos. She was honored with the Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Medal by the American Film Institute in 2019. Her directorial debut in film was Queen & Slim, starring Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya, and written by Lena Waithe. She then worked as executive producer and director for television series Insecure, being nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2020. Early life and education Matsoukas grew up in the Co-op City housing development in the Bronx. Her father worked as a builder, and her mother taught math in a local high school. When Matsoukas was eight, the family moved to Hackensack, New Jersey, where she attended Hackensack High School. Her father is of mixed Greek and Jewish descent, and her mother is of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Jamaican descent. Matsoukas earned her degree at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and completed her graduate work at the AFI Conservatory with an MFA in cinematography. Her graduate thesis was on music videos. Career Matsoukas started out at Black Dog Film, then the now-defunct Gorilla Flix film production company, and is currently a director at Prettybird, which she has been signed to since 2011.