“The Academy is paranoid about its image.”

American film critic

Roger Joseph Ebert was an American film critic, essayist, screenwriter, journalist, and author. He wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013, and became widely known for his film criticism and historical writing. Ebert’s work was marked by an intimate, direct style and by views shaped by populism and humanism. He helped make film analysis accessible to general readers, and often supported foreign and independent films he thought mainstream audiences would respond to, including work by Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Spike Lee, and Martin Scorsese. In 1975, he became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.