Ava DuVernay On Making ‘Origin’, Neon Sale, Some Venice History & Global Appeal Of Justice
deadline.com“That is the part where you look up and you say, ‘how could people have allowed their neighbors to be taken and put in the camps?’” says Origin director Ava DuVernay of the deep roots of discrimination and the cruel consequences of subjugation. “Now, in a similar way, you allow it to come across your feed?
You repost it and keep going?” the Oscar nominated filmmaker adds. “The goal of Origin, of this work is to say stop a second, realize what is going on, how close we are to this and to start to challenge our vocabulary.” Based on Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 best seller Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents, Origin punctiliously tracks thePulitzer Prize winner’s creative and personal journey over several continents through grief, revelation, and the evils of historical stratification.
From antiquity to India’s Dalit caste, once called Untouchables, to slavery in America and the segregation and violence of Jim Crow laws to the Nazis’ systematic persecution of Jews and the horrors of the Holocaust, Origin contains strong and scary connections to today’s political realities, domestic and international.
Neon acquired worldwide rights for the film earlier today, one day before Origin’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 6.
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