Although he has been labeled the ?¢¬Ä¬úFather of African cinema, the Senegalese filmmaker began making films quite late in his life, after establishing a career as a writer. He directed his first short at the age of 40. ?¢¬Ä¬úI realized that in Africa you could only reach a very small number of people through literature,?¢¬Ä he once noted. ?¢¬Ä¬úI decided to ask for a scholarship to study film directing. I wrote to a lot of embassies, and the Soviet Embassy was the first to reply. That?¢¬Ä¬ôs how I became one of Mark Donskoi?¢¬Ä¬ôs pupils at the Gorky Institute.?¢¬Ä

Miranda Richardson plays Nana Mae Frost in Richard Kelly's futuristic saga, Southland Tales. Richardson first astonished cinema audiences in Mike Newell's Dance With a Stranger (1985), in which she played Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in England.

Sergei Bodrov is the director-writer-producer of the epic biopicture MONGOL, Kazakhstan's official entry for the 2007 Foreign-Language Film Oscar. An award-winning filmmaker known for his humanistic perspective, sense of humor and consummate craftsmanship, Sergei Bodrov has been a leading figure in Russian and world cinema for over two decades.

The writer Diablo Cody penned her impressive debut screenplay for “Juno” while working as a phone sex operator/insurance adjuster in Minneapolis.