Kevin Ford is an award-winning filmmaker whose films have premiered at Telluride, NYFF, AFI, SXSW, Tribeca, and Berlinale.

Before any of that, he was inside the world of late '90s rock — Jane's Addiction, 311, Bush, and Stone Temple Pilots. That experience forged something: a fluency with access, a distrust of artifice. It's what makes his work different.

He spent three years in a room with Robert Downey Sr. during the last chapter of his life, helping to craft the film that became Sr. on Netflix — a feature that won Best Documentary from the National Board of Review. He was behind the camera on American Chaos for Sony Pictures Classics, and made The Bomb with journalist Eric Schlosser and Smriti Keshari, a film that ended up being showcased at the Nobel Peace Awards.

Ford’s been doing this for thirty years. Quietly, stubbornly, from New York to Austin to Los Angeles to Oklahoma City, His most recent feature which he co-directed with Ty McMahan, 67 Bombs to Enid — about survivors of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands who ended up in rural America — was executive produced by Errol Morris and won Best Documentary at deadCenter and made its international debut at Thessaloniki Film Festival.

Other notable films by Ford include the experimental feature Everything Is Stolen with Ellar Coltrane which earned Best Documentary at the International Avant-Garde Cinema Awards, and The Pushback produced by Richard Linklater, an official SXSW selection and winner of three awards at El Paso Film Festival, including Best Director.