Steve James is best known as the director, producer, and co-editor of Hoop Dreams, which earned him the Directors Guild of America Award and the MTV Movie Award for Best New Filmmaker in 1995, and won virtually every documentary prize when it was released. He recently produced and edited The War Tapes, the first war documentary shot by American soldiers themselves. The film won the Best International Documentary Award at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival. James' previous documentary, Reel Paradise (2005), was James' fourth film to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically. He also served as an executive producer, story director, and series editor on The New Americans (2004), a seven-hour miniseries on the lives of contemporary immigrants that aired to critical acclaim on PBS. The series won two Golden Hugos at the Chicago International Television Festival and the 2004 Independent Documentary Association Award for Best Limited Series for Television. James produced, directed, and edited the documentary Stevie (2003), which won the grand jury prize at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, as well as other major prizes internationally. The acclaimed feature was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and landed on more than a dozen "Ten Best Films of 2003" lists. His dramatic films include the theatrical feature Prefontaine (1997), which premiered at Sundance, and cable movies Passing Glory (1999) and Joe and Max (2002), which was nominated for an ESPN Espy Award.