Shaka King

Shaka King (born March 7, 1980) is an American film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He is best known for directing and co-writing the 2021 biopic Judas and the Black Messiah.

Biography
An only child, King was born on March 7, 1980 in Crown Heights and grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, both in Brooklyn, New York. His mother's family was from Barbados and Panama, while his father's family was from Panama. Both parents worked as public school teachers and were "very Afrocentric." King's early education occurred in the neighborhoods of East Harlem and Fort Greene. He attended a predominantly white preparatory school in Bay Ridge during his middle and high school years. It was in high school that he discovered his passion for creative writing.

King studied political science and took his first film production course at Vassar College. After graduating, he practiced screenwriting while working as a youth counselor and tutor. In 2007, he entered a graduate film program at New York University Tisch School of the Arts where he was a student of Spike Lee. King's thesis for his Masters of Fine Arts resulted in the feature film Newlyweeds.

King currently lives in the borough of Brooklyn.

Career
King's debut feature film Newlyweeds is about a free-spirited young couple who live in Bedford-Stuyvesant and who prefer to indulge in marijuana and hashish. The film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. He presented his next film, Mulignans, in the USA Narrative Short Films program at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. His 2017 short film LaZercism, starring Lakeith Stanfield, tells of a world in which white people suffer from “racial glaucoma.” Stanfield also appears in King's second feature film, Judas and the Black Messiah, in which Daniel Kaluuya plays the role of Fred Hampton. The feature was nominated for six Academy Awards, including specific nods for King for Best Original Screenplay, and Best Picture. More recently, he got a first-look deal with FX Productions to develop television.

Angelique Jackson of Variety has noted that King is one of those "Black filmmakers [who] are offering an unvarnished look at the legacy of the 1960s civil rights era, examining America’s tortured history of racism ..."

Filmography
Short film

Feature film

Television