1 6 SXS W O R L D | F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 8 | SXSW.COM
It has been a year since Barry Jenkins
won the Best Picture Academy Award
for Moonlight, and if you've tracked his
movements, he has barely been home.
He's obsessed with air travel—and not
just getting from point A to point B, like
his triumphant return trip to Austin
in March as a Film Keynote Speaker
exactly 10 years after his f irst f ilm,
Medicine for Melancholy, premiered
at the fest. Jenkins also f ixates on the
perils of the journey itself, posting
screenshots of crowded flight paths
and potential turbulence, and fretting
when he boards a plane so rickety that
the armrests still have ashtrays.
It's a fitting neurosis. Jenkins' ascent to
Oscar success nearly nosedived several
times. Map his career, and the trajectory
looks less like a 747 than a bumbling bee.
In college, he was a football jock from
the Miami projects whose film knowl-
edge didn't go deeper than Die Hard and
Toy Story. Jenkins was one semester
away from graduating with a degree in
creative writing—from there, he figured
he'd teach English, maybe?—when he saw
a sign on the Florida State University
campus that literally just said, "Film
School." He loved Die Hard. Why not?
Jenkins applied, got in, and immedi-
ately realized he was in over his head.
Classmates David Robert Mitchell (It
Follows), Wes Ball (Maze Runner) and
Tracing Barry
Jenkins' Path
From Medicine
to Moonlight
Barry Jenkins. Photo by David Bornfriend
By Amy Nicholson
