Lana Wachowski (born June 21, 1965, formerly known as Larry Wachowski) and Lilly Wachowski (born December 29, 1967, formerly known as Andy Wachowski) are American film and television directors, writers and producers. The sisters are both trans women. Together known as the Wachowskis (), the sisters have worked as a writing and directing team through most of their careers. They made their directing debut in 1996 with Bound and achieved fame with their second film, The Matrix (1999), a major box office success for which they won the Saturn Award for Best Director. They wrote and directed its two sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions (both in 2003), and were involved in the writing and production of other works in the Matrix franchise. Following the commercial success of the Matrix series, the Wachowskis wrote and produced the 2005 film V for Vendetta, an adaptation of the graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, and in 2008 released the film Speed Racer, a live-action adaptation of the Japanese anime series. Their next film, Cloud Atlas, based on the novel by David Mitchell and co-written and co-directed by Tom Tykwer, was released in 2012. Their film Jupiter Ascending and the Netflix series Sense8, which they co-created with J. Michael Straczynski, debuted in 2015; the second season of Sense8 ended the series in 2018 and was Lana's first major creative undertaking without Lilly. Since the series finale of Sense8, the Wachowskis have been working separately on different projects: Lilly directed, wrote, and executive-produced several episodes of Showtime's Work in Progress (2019) with creators Abby McEnany and Tim Mason, while Lana filmed The Matrix Resurrections, written with Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon, which was released in December 2021. Early life and careers Lana was born in Chicago in 1965; Lilly was born two and a half years later, in 1967. Their mother, Lynne ( Luckinbill), was a nurse and painter. Their father, Ron Wachowski, was a businessman of Polish descent. Their uncle is an actor and Primetime Emmy Award–winning producer, Laurence Luckinbill. Ron and Lynne died five weeks apart in the late 2010s. Lana and Lilly have two other sisters, Julie and Laura. Julie was assistant coordinator for the film Bound; she is a novelist and screenwriter. The Wachowskis attended the Kellogg Elementary School in Chicago's Beverly area, and graduated from Whitney Young High School, known for its performing arts and science