Roland Emmerich

Roland Emmerich is a German-American filmmaker and one of Hollywood's most commercially successful directors, known for Independence Day (1996), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), 2012 (2009), and White House Down (2013). He is openly gay and came out publicly in the 2000s. He directed Stonewall (2015), a dramatization of the 1969 Stonewall uprising, which was criticized for centering a fictional white Midwestern protagonist at the expense of the actual leaders of the rebellion — trans women of color and drag queens. Emmerich responded to the criticism in subsequent interviews.