Rolake Bamgbose is a two-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker with over a decade of experience producing and directing compelling documentaries, short films, and television news content for HBO, FX, HULU, ESPN, VICE, PBS, NBC, ABC and The New York Times, among others. Rolake’s nuanced approach to storytelling allows her to identify and tell deeply personal stories that speak to urgent societal and cultural questions confronting the U.S. and the world. As a director, she is known for illuminating underreported topics with sincerity, integrity and authenticity.
She recently produced the Antoine Fuqua directed “The Day Sports Stood Still,” with Imagine Documentaries and Chris Paul’s Ohh Dipp!!! Productions. The HBO feature-length documentary tells the story of the unprecedented sports shutdown in March of 2020 and the events that followed. The film chronicles the abrupt stoppage, athletes’ prominent role in the cultural reckoning on racial injustices that escalated during the pandemic, and the complex return to competition in the summer and fall. She also produced the feature, “D. Wade Life Unexpected,” with ESPN Films and Imagine Documentaries, which premiered on ESPN in February 2020.
Rolake helped launch The Weekly, an Emmy-winning original documentary program that brought unparalleled New York Times journalism to life on screen. She directed and produced “Connected to the World,” a one-hour special feature. The film premiered on FX as the most watched episode of the series, and received a 2020 News & Documentary Emmy® nomination for “Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story in a Newsmagazine.”
Rolake’s foundation in journalism allows her to bring a sensitive eye to her storytelling. She was a founding member of HBO’s Emmy-winning nightly documentary program, Vice News Tonight, and received a 2017 News and Documentary Emmy nomination for “Outstanding Feature in a Newscast,” while directing and producing features for the program, which debuted in 2016. Rolake’s passion for breaking the mold helped create a space for un-hosted segments that allowed individuals to tell their stories - in their own voices. One of those voices was Felecia Smith, a recipient of President Obama’s January 19, 2017 historic clemency action, the most commutations granted on any one day in U.S. history; her story highlighted the difficult transition between the taste of freedom, and the blunt reality that awaits those returning home from incarceration. Rolake’s work at Vice News Tonight also includes a collection of stories profiling Chicago residents and their diverse personal experiences during the city’s murder rate spike over 2016-2018.
RIKERS, her first feature film, which she produced with Bill Moyers, Marc Levin and Mark Benjamin, is an unflinching portrait of individuals who spent time detained inside New York's City's Rikers Island Jail. The film premiered at New York’s prestigious documentary festival, DOCNYC, in fall 2016 before finding its home on PBS, and received the 2017 Robert F. Kennedy Award for Media Advocacy. That same year, New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced his support of proposed plans to close the notorious facility.
Rolake began her career as a journalist for ABC News, traveling extensively to cover some of the largest news events of the time, including visiting Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that crippled the country. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Emory University, and a Master’s in Journalism from Howard University, where she presented her thesis, “Representing Africa: African Images in African and Western Films and the Ideologies that Govern Those Images.”
Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, Rolake is a first-generation Nigerian-American who loves her Naija roots. She is currently showrunning the biographical documentary about Oprah Winfrey for AppleTV+, and developing stories that speak to varying experiences within the African diaspora and other marginalized communities.