Amandla Stenberg already has one viral film credit to her name: the brilliant oral history of cultural appropriation Don’t Cash Crop My Cornrows. She also wrote, produced, cast, directed, and edited(!) the short fantasy Blue Girls Burn Fast, a convention-smashing coming-of-age story about a teen living in foster care. Now the young actress, activist, and humbly reluctant voice of a generation is taking her enviable talents to NYU. Yesterday Stenberg made the exciting announcement via Instagram, posting a particularly strong selfie to her 600k followers with the caption, “ur lookin at an NYU film student.”
Stenberg has voiced her NYU dreams before, but the low-key confirmation is welcome news at a time when we’re constantly lamenting the lack of women — and particularly women of color — behind the screen. According to a report from San Diego State University, while last year saw a significant increase in leading roles for women in top-grossing films, the percentage of women of color characters in 2015 remained largely unchanged compared to previous years. It’ll take more than one person to change the status quo, but if Stenberg is as good at anything as she is movies, it’s surrounding herself with other ass-kicking young women on a similar mission.
Credits
Text Hannah Ongley
Image via Instagram