Over the past few years, directors Ava DuVernay and Ryan Coogler have forged an aspirational bond as two of the most important black filmmakers working in Hollywood today.

With Coogler's most recent film, Black Panther, speeding closer to $1 billion, the 31-year-old filmmaker from Oakland took time away from celebrating to write a touching ode on ESPN W to his friend, peer and fellow creative.

He revealed that the two met five years ago in 2013. Even before he met her, he was familiar with DuVernay because of her work as a Hollywood publicist. She made a name for herself as a filmmaker for directing movies about black women but she became a national sensation for her 2014 hit Selma, which depicted the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965.

"Ava is the past, present and future. She is all of these things, but sometimes I forget she is human," Coogler wrote, saying that he found out that she lost her father a few years back when she was filming her documentary 13th.

"I almost lost my father, and it nearly broke me in half," he recalled. "Ava, the warrior, weathered that loss while making 13th to show everyone with a Netflix subscription that American slavery never ended — it had only morphed."

Coogler praised DuVernay for championing the rights of others, hiring women filmmakers to direct her hit show Queen Sugar and for being loving and naturing against all odds. He spent the rest of the ode showing his appreciation for A Wrinkle in Time.

The film based on the popular book by Madeleine L'Engle has been deemed unfilmable but Coogler believes that DuVernay has proven everyone wrong. Weeks ago, there was controversy claiming that Black Panther and DuVernay's film will compete and ultimately devour one another at the box office, but fans of both have united to make each film successful hits.

"But above all, it's a film about a little black girl with glasses — like my mom, like my wife, like my big sister Ava — who refuses to accept that her dad is lost," Coogler wrote. "The main character in the film, Meg, uses her love, her hope and her kickass skills as a scientist to bring him back, and maybe she saves the universe along the way."

Coogler Ode to DuVernay

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