Roger Ross Williams

Director, Producer & Writer

Cassandro tells the true story of Saúl Armendáriz, a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso who rises to international stardom after he creates the “exotico” character Cassandro, the “Liberace of Lucha Libre,” and in the process upends not just the macho wrestling world but also his own life.

Cassandro stars Gael García Bernal as Saúl, and also features Bad Bunny, and will be released in 2023 with Amazon Prime Video.

Cassandro 

An account of the American Evangelicals' attempts to indoctrinate their Christian Right beliefs in Uganda.

God Loves Uganda

Love To Love You, Donna Summer is a deeply personal portrait of the disco legend, on and off the stage, through never-before-seen film excerpts. Donna was an early pioneer of taping herself. The documentary includes a trove of archival footage, photographs, artwork, writings, and personal audio, a lot of which was shot and taped by Donna Summer, offering an intimate perspective on her complexity and talent.

Shaped by Summer’s own reflections, the memories of close family, friends and colleagues, and filled with the sounds of Summer’s songs, LOVE TO LOVE YOU, DONNA SUMMER is an in-depth look at the iconic artist as she creates music that takes her from the avant-garde music scene in Germany, to the glitter and bright lights of dance clubs in New York, to worldwide acclaim, her voice and artistry becoming the defining soundtrack of an era.

Love to Love You, Donna Summer

Traveling While Black is a cinematic VR experience directed by Roger Ross Williams in collaboration with VR pioneers Félix Lajeunesse & Paul Raphaël.

Traveling While Black immerses the viewer in the long history of restriction of movement for black Americans and the creation of safe spaces in our communities, transporting you to historic Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington DC. The viewer shares an intimate series of moments with several of the patrons of Ben’s as they reflect on their experiences of restricted movement and race relations in the U.S.

Confronting the way we understand and talk about race in America, Traveling While Black highlights the urgent need to not only remember the past but to learn from it, and facilitate a dialogue about the challenges minority travelers still face today.

Traveling While Black

Internationally renowned for having influenced American and pop culture more than any other entertainment venue, the Apollo Theater created opportunities for new talent to be seen and has served as a launchpad for myriad artists including Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald and more.

The Apollo covers the rich history of the storied performance space over its 85 years and follows a new production of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me as it comes to the theater’s grand stage.

The creation of this vibrant multi-media stage show frames the way in which The Apollo explores the current struggle of black lives in America, the role that art plays in that struggle, and the broad range of African-American achievements that The Apollo Theater represents.

The Apollo

Life, Animated follows Owen Suskind as he graduates to adulthood and takes his first steps toward independence. The subject of his father Ron Suskind’s New York Times bestseller, Owen was diagnosed with autism at the age of three, when he suddenly and inexplicably went silent – and for years after remained unable to connect with other people or to convey his thoughts, feelings or desires. Beautiful, original animations offer rich insights into Owen’s fruitful dialogue with the Disney oeuvre as he imagines himself heroically facing adversity as a member in a tribe of sidekicks.

The animation is done by Mac Guff, which also worked on films such as Despicable Me and The Lorax. To secure the rights for the Disney clips and characters used in the film, Williams showed the unfinished product to the heads-of-department put together by Disney Productions president Sean Bailey. Roger refers to it as “the day I made the lawyers cry” after the end of the presentation. The Disney films selected for the doc were “100% Suskind”.