Khary Saeed Jones engages film projects that explore the tensions between fiction, memory, and everyday life. His films and collaborations have screened at Sundance, SXSW, MoMA (NY), CIFF (ME), Full Frame (NC), ICA Boston, and many other festivals and venues. As a writer-director, his work includes the short films Hug, Three and a Half Thoughts, Chrysalis, and the forthcoming feature-length film Gumbo. Jones has also served on the editorial teams behind the documentary features: Where the Pavement Ends (PBS WORLD Channel/America ReFramed), Black Memorabilia (PBS/Independent Lens), Lorraine Hansberry: SightedEyes/Feeling Heart (PBS/American Masters), He Named Me Malala (Fox Searchlight), Sembene! (Kino Lorber), and The World According to Dick Cheney (Showtime).

Born and raised in Camden, New Jersey, Jones is the recipient of awards, grants, and fellowships from the Sundance Institute, Firelight Media, the Harvard Film Study Center, the Mass Cultural Council, the LEF Foundation, the Points North Institute, and the Telly Awards. He studied at Columbia University (MA, MFA) and Morehouse College (BA), and he is currently a Professor of the Practice in Drama and Film at Tufts University, where he teaches storytelling for the screen and advises students developing both scripted and documentary projects from inception to edit.

Jones received the 2025 Karen Schmeer Excellence in Documentary Film Editing Award for his work on Night Fight, which he also directed and produced.

‍

ABOUT NIGHT FIGHT

Night Fight documents a week in the life of a Black man in the United States as it seizes and convulses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the police killing of George Floyd, and the most consequential presidential election in the nation’s history. As he attempts to step out of the long shadow cast by an act of racial violence, he contemplates enacting one himself.

‍

FILM

NIGHT FIGHT

PROGRAM AFFILIATION

William Greaves Fund

COHORT YEAR

2021

WEBSITE

kharyjones.com

INSTAGRAM

@khary.jones