Ava DuVernay’s 14th had its world premiere Friday night as the closing film of the 64th New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall, and the first reviews are in. Variety’s review says the documentary “exerts the same kind of historical/topical force that ‘13th’ did.”
That’s a full-circle moment. Her 2016 documentary 13th opened NYFF a decade ago, as The Film Stage noted. Now the sequel closes it.
What It’s About
14th centers on the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, and the ideas inside it: citizenship, due process and equal protection under the law. The film traces that story from Reconstruction to today and features more than 50 interviews with historians, lawyers, scholars and commentators, according to theGrio. DuVernay directed and produced it with Spencer Averick, Tammy Garnes and Paul Garnes through her company ARRAY.
DuVernay put the connection between the two films in one line: “If ‘13th’ asked who gets caged, then ‘14th’ asks who gets counted.”
The IAHHM Take
13th became required viewing in a lot of Black households, classrooms and group chats. It made a dense piece of legal history feel personal, and it gave people language for things they had lived. If 14th hits the way the early reviews suggest, expect the same thing: watch parties, HBCU classroom screenings and a lot of family debates over the holidays.
That’s what DuVernay does best. She takes the stuff we learned in a textbook (or never learned at all) and makes it about us, our families and our history.
Mark your calendar: 14th hits select U.S. and U.K. theaters on Nov. 27 and streams worldwide on Netflix on Dec. 4. Are you seeing it in a theater or waiting for Netflix?
More film and TV: IAHHM Movies/TV.
Source: Variety | theGrio | The Film Stage
