Kwanza Nicole Gooden is a Caribbean American writer-director based in Los Angeles. She is called to share nuanced, evocative stories through narrative and documentary filmmaking.
In 2022, she directed her first major studio project – 3-part doc-series for ComcastNBCU called The Black Beauty Effect, which chronicles and celebrates the contributions made to the beauty industry by black communities. Kwanza also produced and edited the series which was acquired by Netflix in 2023 and is now streaming.
In 2021, Kwanza was approached by Ventureland, Indeed, and Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad to direct the Rising Voices Impact Film, a short documentary that journeys with 10 BIPOC filmmakers through the inaugural Rising Voices program, and highlights the necessity for diversity and inclusion within the film industry. It was showcased at Tribeca 2021 and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
In 2019, she was asked to join 14 other female filmmakers to direct a short film as part of the Los Angeless anthology series. Los Angeless premiered in 2020 at Idyllwild International Film Festival and won the Indie Spirit Award.
In 2018, Kwanza co-wrote and directed Token, a short film about a young black girl struggling to fit in with her white surroundings, loosely based off Kwanza’s own childhood. That same year, Token screened in NYC and won Best Director at the Oscar-qualifying Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival. Token was also a semifinalist at Los Angeles Cinefest, an official selection at Brooklyn Women’s Film Festival, and in 2019, was awarded Best Drama Short at the Windy City Film Festival in Chicago.
Raised by a Jamaican family in the suburbs of Washington, DC, Kwanza’s love for storytelling was inherited from her late great-grandmother, Iris Scott, who bewildered young Kwanza with tales of island life. This inherent love plus an affinity for movies and TV soon transformed into a passion for filmmaking, leading Kwanza to receive her B.A. in Film and Video Studies from George Mason University, where her thesis film Due For Love won the Juror’s Choice Award for Best Film.
After graduating, Kwanza moved to Los Angeles in 2015 to further pursue her filmmaking dreams. As a multi-hyphenate filmmaker, she has created a vast catalog of work with companies like BuzzFeed, BET Networks, Merry Jane, Complex, Color of Change, Represent Justice, Black Love Inc, Amazon Music, and Indeed. And in 2022 she founded her own production company -GoodEntertainment, LLC.
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IMAGE BY: RAMSEY NEVILLE
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