Leslie McCleave’s most recent film is the feature documentary, How Sweet the Sound – The Blind Boys of Alabama, the first film about this legendary gospel group.  How Sweet the Sound premiered at the 2015 Nashville Film Festival and continues to tour the film festival circuit. Leslie’s first narrative feature, the supernatural, environmental-awareness tale ROAD, won the Outstanding Performance Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival and was acquired by Showtime, iTunes and Snag Films. Her short narrative films have won top awards at Sundance, South by Southwest, Locarno, and San Francisco International Film Festivals and include Avenue X, Blixa Bargeld Stole My Cowboy Boots (starring Michael Imperioli) and Meeting Marty (commissioned and produced by Sundance Channel). In 2011 she created the 5-screen 9/11 documentary installation cedarliberty, (with Elena del Rivero), which was presented at the International Center of Photography in New York City and at the New York State Museum in Albany. She’s an alumnus of the NYU Tisch Graduate Film Program and the Sundance Institute Writers and Directors Labs. Her work has received support from Creative Capital, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Arts Council, IFP Radziwill Documentary Fund, the Irish Film Board, and the PSC-CUNY Research Foundation.