<\/p>\n
In 2011, Coogler\u2019s short film \u201cFig\u201d was selected to be part of ABFF and HBO\u2019s annual short film competition, helping the \u201cextremely broke\u201d aspiring director launch his career \u2014 and take his \u201chot girlfriend\u201d on a beach vacation to Miami, where the festival is held annually.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know that we had a festival like that, that had a relationship with HBO, where your short film could get put on television. And that was what I was after, the opportunity for access. And I didn\u2019t know that that prize came with a little cash reward,\u201d Coogler said at the ABFF Honors on Monday night, laughing along with the well-heeled crowd assembled…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.imdb.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The American Black Film Festival was a key step in Ryan Coogler\u2019s journey to become an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker. It also gave him a leg up in wooing his future wife and producing partner Zinzi Coogler. In 2011, Coogler\u2019s short film \u201cFig\u201d was selected to be part of ABFF and HBO\u2019s annual short film competition, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2286595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[25538,31714,21751,22556,21993,22860,21912,21738,24141,22205,21913],"class_list":["post-2286594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-actors","tag-actresses","tag-celebrities","tag-directors","tag-films","tag-hollywood","tag-movies","tag-news","tag-stars","tag-television","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Ryan-Cooglers-\u2018Sinners-Dwayne-Johnson-Angela-Bassett-Saluted-at-ABFF.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2286594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2286596,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286594\/revisions\/2286596"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2286595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2286594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2286594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2286594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}