Shola Lynch is the director of the documentary filmmaking program and Diana King Endowed Professor in Film, Filmmaking, Television and Related Media.
Lynch is also an award-winning American filmmaker. Her latest documentary, Number One on the Call Sheet: Black Leading Women in Hollywood, premiered on Apple TV+ in 2025. It has won a special Critics’ Choice award for Black Cinema and is nominated for two 2026 NAACP Image Awards, best television documentary and best documentary director.
Latest News: "Number on the Call Sheet" has been nominated for Best Film at the 2026 BET Awards—making it the only documentary in the category.
She is best known for the Image Award-winning feature documentary FREE ANGELA & All Political Prisoners and the Peabody Award-winning documentary CHISHOLM ’72: Unbought & Unbossed. Her independent film body of work and her other collaborative projects feed her passion to bring history alive with captivating stories of people, places and events.
Lynch is now honored to inspire a new generation of storytellers at Spelman College. From 2013 – 2024, she served as the curator of the Moving Image & Recorded Sound Division at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. In 2016, Lynch became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
She is currently completing a documentary about Reverend Jesse Jackson. She is also working on a passion project about the American sprinter, icon, and still world record holder in the women’s 100m and 200m, Florence Griffith Joyner. Lynch believes deeply in the value of preserving history and its power in storytelling.
Learn More About Shola Lynch.