Rachel Morrison '00 Featured in 'The Wrap' Magazine

In 2017, Rachel Morrison '00 (BFA, Photography & Imaging/Film & TV) became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, breaking a 90-year long streak of the category's male-ony award winners. She won the award for her work in Dee Rees' '07 (MFA, Kanbar Institute, Graduate Film) film Mudbound. After that, Morrison went on to become the first female cinematographer to make a Marvel movie with Black Panther.

Morrison recently released her feature directorial debut, The Fire Inside. The film premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, a biographical sports film about American professional boxer Claressa "T-Rex" Shields. 

TheWrap magazine sat down with Morrison to talk to her about everything from her time at Tisch to debuting this film. 

"One of the things that I loved about film was the power of the story to build empathy and to have this entirely transformative experience. I would come out of the movie theater after a potent film and feel like I had lived another life. And as much as I loved photography, it still felt a little bit like I was looking at something, I wasn’t living it."