Phillip Youmans

Born February 18, 2000, Phillip Youmans is a filmmaker from New Orleans. At 19, Phillip became the youngest and first African-American director to win the Founder's Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival for his feature-length debut, Burning Cane, which he wrote, directed, shot, and edited during his final years of high school. Phillip is also the youngest director to ever have a feature film compete at the Tribeca Film Festival. Distributed by Ava Duvernay's Array Releasing, Burning Cane opened in select theaters on October 25th, 2019 and was released on Netflix via Array on November 6th, 2019. Recently, Phillip was nominated for a Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Director and a Film Independent Spirit Award for his work on the film.