Since 1981, Condit’s videos have created heroines whose lives swing between beauty and the grotesque, innocence and cruelty, youth and fragility. Her work puts a subversive spin on the traditional mythology of women in film and the psychology of sexuality and violence. Her “feminist fairy tales” focus on violence against women, friendships, age, and most recently, the natural world. She’s a professor emerita in the Department of Film, Video, Animation & New Genres at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she was the director of the graduate program in film for 30 years.
Italian actress Cristiana Dell’Anna was expected to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a doctor. Still, her call for acting pushed her to follow her dreams and move to London at 20 years old to study drama. Her role as Patrizia in the hit Italian crime drama series Gomorrah brought her international success. She also appeared in Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-nominated film The Hand of God. Initially, her role, although just a cameo, was written for an older woman, but director Paolo Sorrentino insisted on having her in the cast and, as a result, changed the production schedule to meticulously reflect her aging. This year, she stars in Cabrini, playing the titular role of the first American Saint recognized by the Catholic Church. Dell’Anna stars on the big screen as the Italian nun who fought for equal rights in New York in the late 1800s. The film boasts a stellar international cast, including John Lithgow and David Morse, and focuses on female empowerment and contemporary issues of immigration and assimilation.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson is a Tony Award-winning actor, author, producer, and podcast host known for both his creative work and his ongoing advocacy in the LGBTQIA+ community. Ferguson starred as the widely beloved character Mitchell Pritchett on the Award-winning ABC comedy Modern Family, which ran for an impressive 11 seasons. He made his Broadway debut at the age of 21 as Chip in On The Town and later originated the role of Leaf Coneybear in the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. In 2023, Ferguson returned to Broadway and earned a Tony® Award in the category of Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play in the revival of playwright Richard Greenberg’s Tony Award-winning play, Take Me Out. This year, he plays best friend Stan to Margaret Cho’s Emma in All That We Love, a film about grief and midlife awakenings.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste is an acclaimed actress, writer, and composer known for British dramas and hard-hitting American police procedurals. For seven years, she was seen on Without A Trace opposite Anthony LaPaglia and was featured in the hit drama Broadchurch, playing a role written especially for her by the show’s writer and creator, Chris Chibnall. Jean-Baptiste has also graced the stages of the Royal National Theatre and Shakespeare in the Park, is an accomplished musician, and made her directorial debut with the 2010 short film Ink, which she also penned.
Jean-Baptiste received Academy Award, Golden Globe, and British Academy Award nominations for her riveting performance in Mike Leigh’s 1996 film, Secrets & Lies. Jean-Baptiste and Leigh’s history of collaboration has been decades-long; they first worked together on his theatrical show A Great Big Shame and, in her work as a writer and composer, Jean-Baptiste also wrote the score for Leigh’s feature film Career Girls. Now, Jean-Baptiste and Leigh have reunited for their upcoming feature Hard Truths, an exploration of the contemporary world with a tragicomic study of human strengths and weaknesses.
A decade ago, Nnamdi Asomugha retired from the NFL after 11 years as an all-star football player. Since then he has emerged as a critically lauded actor, producer, and now director. His breakout role in 2017’s Crown Heights earned him an NAACP Image Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. As a producer, Asomugha has helped bring various projects to the stage and screen, such as the award-winning Beasts of No Nation, The Banker, and Harriet, as well as the Broadway stage production of American Son and this year’s Tony Award-nominee for Best Revival of a Play, Purlie Victorious.
This year’s The Knife marks Asomugha’s feature film directorial debut. Asomugha co-wrote the script alongside Mark Duplass, co-produced the film under his iAm21 banner, and received the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival Best New Narrative Director Award. Asomugha also stars in this dramatic, psychological thriller alongside Aja Naomi King, Melissa Leo, and Manny Jacinto that tells the story of a Black family who is confronted with an encounter that confronts themes of race, moral ambiguity, and class in the face of a police investigation.
The 5280 Award was created to honor a filmmaking team whose creative collaboration on a film has contributed to its elevated success and appreciation across audiences, making it an exceptional piece of cinematic work. It is with this spirit that we honor Sony Pictures’ Saturday Night as the 2024 recipient of the 5280 Award.
RaMell Ross is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and liberated documentarian. He has been awarded an Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, Howard Foundation Fellowship, a USA Artist Fellowship, and was a 2022 Solomon Fellow at Harvard University. His feature experimental documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening won a Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and 2020 Peabody Award. It was nominated for an Oscar at the 91st Academy Awards and an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Film. RaMell holds degrees in Sociology and English from Georgetown University and is an associate professor in Brown University’s Visual Art Department. His work is in various public and private collections such as the Museum for Modern Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the High Museum. His book Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body was shortlisted for the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation photobook award.
Joan Chen is one of the most widely recognized and respected stars in the international film industry. Chen Executive Produces and Stars in the Focus Features film, Dìdi (弟弟), which won the Audience Award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
She is best known for her roles in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Oscar-winning The Last Emperor, David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” series, and Oliver Stone’s Heaven and Earth, as well as for directing Autumn in New York, starring Winona Ryder and Richard Gere and the Chinese-language films Xiu Xiu The Sent-Down-Girl, English, and Hero. Her early performance in Little Flower garnered her the Best Actress Award in China. She then went on to receive the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion Award for her performance in Ang Lee’s critically acclaimed Lust, Caution.
Chen just wrapped production on The Wedding Banquet, in which she stars alongside Lily Gladstone and Bowen Yang, as well as the Amazon MGM Holiday Comedy Oh. What. Fun., alongside Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Longoria, and Jason Schwartzman.
