Ryan Coogler, director of the box office phenomenon Black Panther, penned a supportive tribute to Ava DuVernay and her new film, A Wrinkle in Time.

Ava DuVernay is quickly becoming a household name. As a writer and director, she's known for powerhouse, emotional films like Selma - the biopic of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama - as well as 13th, a Netflix documentary that goes into America's prison system to show how racial inequality affects inmates. She's quickly become someone to watch in Hollywood, and she's just released her newest film, A Wrinkle in Time, a major Disney property that is essentially about a "little black girl with glasses." This is no small feat.

Related: A Wrinkle in Time Review

Ryan Coogler, another great director on the rise, took to ESPNto pen a supportive tribute to DuVernay and her new film. In this article, he goes in depth about what makes Ava stand out among her peers, Coogler being one of them. He wrote:

"Ava is the past, present and future. She is all of these things, but sometimes I forget she is human. I was reminded of this a couple of years back, when I got the heartbreaking news that she had lost her father. I almost lost my father, and it nearly broke me in half. Ava, the warrior, weathered that loss while making "13th" to show everyone with a Netflix subscription that American slavery never ended -- it had only morphed."

He looks up to Ava as an older sister, and his affection and admiration for her professionalism and body of work is very evident here. It's no secret that America is more divided now than ever, so to see a great artist publicly share love and admiration for the work of his colleague and friend is truly heartening. Hopefully the rest of Hollywood will catch up to this kind of attitude.

A Wrinkle in Time follows Meg (Storm Reid), a bespectacled 12-year-old whose father (Chris Pine) goes missing while studying a scientific method of traveling called tesseracting. Meg, her friend Calvin and her younger brother Charles are sent into space to look for him by three mysterious beings: Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey), Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon) and Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling). The film also stars Zach Galifianakis, David Oyelowo and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

Coogler is most well known for his newest Marvel film, Black Panther, which is absolutely destroying the box office right now. He's also directed Creed, which is arguably the best Rocky sequel to date, and Fruitvale Station. With only three feature films released so far, he's already built an impressive body of work. Many have pointed to Black Panther and proclaimed Coogler one of the next great American directors, and for good reason. Clearly, Coogler feels that DuVernay should be included in that same conversation.

More: A Wrinkle in Time: All of Mrs. Who’s Quotes & References

Source: ESPNW

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