Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, used his television show with Gene Siskel to push small films into national conversation, naming the documentary Hoop Dreams the best film of 1994 and championing Errol Morris's Gates of Heaven for decades. In 1999 he founded his own festival in Champaign, Illinois, devoted to overlooked films, now known as Ebertfest. A thumbs-up from him could keep an arthouse film in cinemas for weeks. He died in 2013.