Morgan Freeman Opens Free Film Academy in Memphis: “Every Child Deserves a Close-Up”

On a sun-drenched November morning in 2025, Morgan Freeman stood on the corner of Vance Avenue and Danny Thomas Boulevard in South Memphis, cut a red ribbon with the same hand that once held an Oscar, and quietly changed the future of thousands of kids who look like the boy he used to be.

The Morgan Freeman Institute of Cinematic Arts is now open—100% tuition-free, state-of-the-art, and built on the very streets where Freeman sold newspapers at age nine to buy movie tickets.
The 40,000-square-foot campus features three soundstages, a 150-seat screening theater, editing suites with the latest Avid and Adobe systems, a costume shop, a 4K virtual production wall, and a library whose first book on every shelf is a signed copy of Freeman’s childhood favorite, To Kill a Mockingbird. Every piece of equipment, every class, every meal in the cafeteria is free—no strings, no loans, no hidden fees.

Freeman’s vision is brutally simple: “I want the next Spike Lee, the next Ava DuVernay, the next Denzel to come from a zip code where dreams usually stop at the city limits.”
The academy accepts 250 students per year, ages 14–21, from low-income families within a 200-mile radius of Memphis. Admission requires only a 60-second video answering “What story inside you is dying to get out?” No transcripts. No test scores. No connections. Just heart and hustle.

The curriculum reads like a love letter to storytelling.
Oscar-winners Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer teach master acting classes. Jordan Peele leads a horror-writing intensive. Shonda Rhimes hosts a showrunner bootcamp. Ryan Coogler runs a directing lab. Freeman himself teaches “The Art of Presence” every Thursday afternoon—students say he still makes them cry with a single look, then makes them laugh so hard they forget they were crying.

Day One was pure magic.
Two hundred and fifty teenagers—some in hand-me-down sneakers, some who had never left their county—walked through doors that used to feel a million miles away. A 16-year-old girl from Orange Mound named Keisha stood on Soundstage A, looked at the same mark Freeman stood on when he filmed The Shawshank Redemption, and whispered, “Miss Viola, is this really for us?” Davis answered by hugging her so hard the boom mic shook.

Funding is locked in for the next 25 years.
Freeman seeded the institute with $60 million of his own money, matched by Netflix, Amazon Studios, and a surprise $25 million gift from an anonymous donor who turned out to be Oprah Winfrey. Every graduate receives a $15,000 “launch grant” and a guaranteed paid internship at one of 42 partner studios worldwide.

Memphis is already different.
Barbershops buzz with kids talking about f-stops instead of felonies. Grandmothers brag about grandchildren who now come home talking about three-point lighting instead of three-point plays. The first short film produced by the institute—a 12-minute piece about a boy who talks to his late father through old home movies—premiered at Sundance 2026 and won the Short Film Grand Jury Prize.

Morgan Freeman didn’t just build a school.
He built a runway.
From the same red-dirt streets that raised him,
the next generation of storytellers is about to take flight.

Memphis youth, the camera is rolling.
Your close-up starts now.