Mario Van Peebles is a consummate filmmaking Renaissance man. "When you grow up in a by any means necessary independent filmmaking family, you’ve got to learn to do it all," jokes Van Peebles. Recently, Mario wrote, directed, and starred in MVP, a stage play tribute to his father Melvin Van Peebles. The play was performed at Lincoln Center in the Summer of 2024.
Mario originally broke out as an actor in Clint Eastwood‘s HEART BREAK RIDGE for which he won an NAACP image award. He played political icon, Malcolm X, in ALI directed by Michael Man. Mario’s feature directing debut was the gangster classic, NEW JACK CITY. He followed that up by starring in and directing his bold western, POSSE. Van Peebles went on to make the controversial feature, PANTHER, about the rise of the Black Panther party for self-defense, which won the Silver Leopard Award at the Locarno Film Festival. Mario wrote, starred, produced, and directed BAADASSSSS! about his maverick father’s making of his game-changing film SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG! Playing your own father is like psychotherapy on celluloid," jokes Mario. BAADASSSSS! received Ebert and Roeper's Best Movie of the Year Awards. Van Peebles wrote, starred, produced and directed the Indy feature, ARMED, which challenges the powerful gun industry. In it, Mario plays a self-proclaimed "Good Guy" with easy access to meds and weapons of war.
Mario just finished directing and executive producing the pilot and second episode of the new Netflix series, NEMESIS. Mario was a supervising director producer on Hulu’s WU-TANG: AN AMERICAN SAGA. Mario was nominated for the 2022 NAACP Image Award for his work on the biopic SALT-N-PEPA as well as in 2017 for Outstanding Directing in a Television Movie/Limited Series for his work on the reimagining of ROOTS.
An advocate for education and environmental justice, Van Peebles produced BRING YOUR A GAME for at risk youth. MARIO’S GREEN HOUSE chronicles he and his family’s humorous attempts to go green in materialistic Hollywood. "We never got to full green jokes Van Peebles but we did get to Olive." "With my latest wild western OUTLAW POSSE the circle is complete," says Mario. "I got to do my first Western with my dad and my second riding with my son Mandela. This life has been incredible. My father gave me my first lines in a feature film, and I gave him his last lines in a film."
