Barry Jenkins

Jenkins was born in 1979 at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, the youngest of four siblings, each from a different father. His father separated from his mother while she was pregnant with Jenkins, believing that he was not Jenkins's father; he died when Jenkins was 12. Jenkins, in later life, still has "no idea who my 'real' father is". "I don't think any of us were planned, but I was definitely a mistake", he had later said.

His mother, a nurse, suffered from a crack-cocaine addiction, and was a teenage runaway who Jenkins has said abandoned him. Jenkins grew up in Liberty City, a neighborhood of Miami, and was primarily raised by another older woman (who had also looked after his mother while she was a teenager) in an overcrowded apartment: "I wasn't raised by anyone who was a blood relative of mine, and yet I could see my blood relatives all around the neighborhood because things were just so, so bad". As a teenager Jenkins lived with friends from Miami Northwestern Senior High School, at which he played football and ran track. His disordered and lonely childhood led him to retreat inwards and develop an active imagination. He hoped to pursue a creative-writing degree.

Jenkins studied film at the Florida State University College of Motion Picture Arts (FSU), where he met many of his future frequent collaborators, including cinematographer James Laxton, producer Adele Romanski and editors Nat Sanders and Joi McMillon. His decision to study there was instigated by an initial visit: "I thought: This is the blackest place in America. I gotta be here". Feeling inadequate in terms of his technological skills, Jenkins took a year off to develop them. Jenkins felt a general lack of confidence at the start of the programme, which began for Jenkins in a spontaneous manner. To resolve his personal misgivings, in a divergence from the inspirations of his classmates, he looked toward foreign arthouse cinema and directors like Wong Kar-wai, Claire Denis, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Lynne Ramsay.

While at Florida State, Jenkins became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. Four days after graduating from FSU, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a filmmaking career, spending two years working on various projects as a production assistant. He became disillusioned with "Hollywood film-making" after working for Harpo Productions, an experience which contrasted with his time studying film, reflecting that "At school, film-making had been the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me".