Ryan Coogler’s advice to young filmmakers: “Find people that are kind of your level, who could use your help”

In 2013, writer-director Ryan Coogler came out the gate swinging with Fruitvale Station, the powerful true story of Oscar Grant III, the 22-year Black man who was killed on New Year’s Day 2009 by a transit police officer at Fruitvale BART (Bay Area Rapid Transport) station in Oakland. Its release coincided with a growing movement against racial injustice in America, and Coogler has continued to make films that relate to the history, realities and culturally-ingrained fantasies of the African diaspora. He followed up with the first instalment of the Creed trilogy in 2015, broke records with billion-dollar blockbuster Black Panther (2018), and proved that audiences are desperate for original genre films with Sinners (2025), a thriller which explores the overlooked histories of diverse communities in the 1930s American South. 

On a drizzly Monday morning, Coogler arrived at BFI Southbank ready to inspire a room of 100 aspiring young creatives from the BFI Film Academy. Film programmer Wema Mumma led the conversation, and began by asking about the turning point in Coogler’s life when he pivoted from pursuing sports and science to filmmaking. Coogler painted a picture of himself at 19, a student at Sacramento State with a football scholarship. In a tale as old as time, it all goes back to an educator who believed in him. Although he was a chemistry student, creative writing was also in Coogler’s core curriculum, and teacher Rosemary Graham encouraged him to pursue screenwriting: “Every year I would fall more and more in love with the idea of being a filmmaker… I could feel my focus shifting,” Ryan recalled. At 21 he applied to USC’s film school and from there, the only way was up. 

Having gone straight from film school to developing and directing Fruitvale Station, Coogler was asked how he handled that transition. “That’s just part of being a person,” he explained, “having to face the possibility of failure or embarrassment, and you’ve just got to get yourself used to it.” He detailed his struggles with anxiety, proving that we’re all capable of achieving great things if we approach them with a willingness to try. “My experience on a professional set was zero,” he said, but with the help of more experienced collaborators, he accomplished one of the most powerful directorial debuts of the century.

Asked about his explorations of Black masculinity, liberation and cultural representation, and whether he’d always planned to develop these themes, Coogler described the lack of diversity that he was accustomed to seeing on-screen: “It didn’t reflect my reality,” so he began to think “maybe I can build films with characters that look like the world I came up in.”  

When Mumma asked him what it was like trying to build a career without a blueprint, Coogler credited the guidance of his mentors. “[Forest] Whitaker bet on me early,” he said of Fruitvale’s producer, while also mentioning his rapport with Spike Lee. During the making of Creed, he even received business advice from Sylvester Stallone. Coogler emphasises the importance of networking: “Find people that are kind of your level, who could use your help,” he said. “When you get your first good job and you got somebody there who actually knew you before…it’s like having a gold queen in your pocket.” 

During the Q&A portion of the session, one BFI Film Academy alum asked about Coogler’s filmmaking community and the familiar faces that he has worked with across multiple projects. “I played football my whole life, so I’m a guy that sees the value in team-building for sure,” said Coogler. “The crewing up process…it’s almost like a paramilitary system, and football is like that too.” 

With every shoot, “the first day is the hardest, and after that you find your rhythm,” he told the audience. Whether you make a film “every 20 years” like Kenneth Lonergan, the director of Margaret (2011) and Manchester by the Sea (2016), or “Luca Guadagnino, who makes a movie every 6 months”, you have to find your speed and the community who can work around the flow of it. 

Reflecting on Sinners’ centrepiece “You Lied to Me” scene, Coogler recalled the difficulties of technical limitations, describing how steadicam operator Renard Cheren ran around with a 110lb IMAX camera which could only capture 70 seconds of footage before having to reset the roll. “You always have to find innovation…every movie has its own particular issue.” 

When filming at BART stations for Fruitvale, Coogler’s crew had to shoot on weekends during tight 3-hour maintenance periods. They measured out the space for rigorous rehearsals, “so that right when the station closed, we ran in and shot everything.” 

Further back, as a student, his peers constructed metre-long set-ups with lens adaptors to achieve a cinematic look. In an age where aspiring filmmakers can access cinematic camera phones, he hopes that the next generation will be able to execute ambitious shots with ease. 

After the session, I got to talk to the aspiring creatives from the audience, made up of students and alumni of the BFI Film Academy. Some attendees were embarking on their first short films through BFI Film Academy courses, others had taken courses years ago and were now working in production or studying hard on film-related courses. Tamana, a production professional, felt encouraged by his honesty, describing how “he didn’t sugarcoat it…when he mentioned ‘I didn’t know what this meant’, I was like I appreciate this, I respect it.” “It was really refreshing to have him reaffirm the value of community in filmmaking“, said Damilare, who had travelled from Wales for the session. 

Coming from all over the UK, BFI Film Academy alumni are united in the kind of community that Coogler described as being integral to a filmmaker’s journey. Like Coogler, I am excited to see what they will go on to create together.