Born in Dallas in 1950, Billy Woodberry is one of the founders of the L.A. Rebellion film movement (also known as the “Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers”). His first feature film, Bless Their Little Hearts (1984), is a pioneering and essential work of the movement, influenced by Italian Neorealism. Woodberry’s films have been shown at the Cannes and Berlin Film Festivals, Viennale, Rotterdam, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Harvard Film Archive, Camera Austria Symposium, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, and BAMPFA in Berkeley, among others. In 2022, as part of the L.A. Rebellion Retrospective, during which Bless Their Little Hearts was screened, the filmmaker attended LEFFEST. Now based in Portugal, in 2024 he directed Mário (about the Angolan essayist Mário Pinto de Andrade), featured in the Official Selection – Out of Competition section of LEFFEST. In 2025, he returns to the festival for a conversation about Teza, a film by Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima.
Billy Woodberry
Director
