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Ava DuVernay’s new documentary “14th” is set to premiere globally on Netflix on Dec. 4, following a theatrical release in select U.S. and U.K. theaters beginning Nov. 27.
As previously announced, “14th” will host its
world premiere at the New York Film Festival. It will be the festival’s closing night film on Oct. 9 at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.
“14th” is a follow-up to DuVernay’s “13th” documentary which examined the racial injustices within the American prison system. “14th” centers around the 14th Amendment, which protects due process. The logline says, “Written in the wreckage of the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was meant to close the door on the hierarchy of human worth. Instead, it has become a permanent argument.”
DuVernay said, “If ’13th’ asked who gets caged, then 14th asks who gets counted. This is not a film about the past tense of freedom. I’m not interested in asking you to look back. The film asks what kind of country is being written beneath our feet now … while we’re busy believing the stories we’ve all been told.”
Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) and Anna Paulina Luna (R), former Sen. Jeff Flake (R) and current Sen. Alex Padilla (D), plus legal minds Sherrilyn Ifill, Robert Chang and Stacey Abrams are among the historians, lawyers, scholars, curators and politicians lending their voice to the documentary as DuVernay chronicles the vicious battle over the amendment that has raged for over 150 years. “14th” brings together legal minds, politicians, historians and cultural voices in direct conversation with a question America still hasn’t settled: Who gets to belong?
Social commentators like conservative author Donald T. Critchlow and cultural critic Hasan Piker also feature alongside Pulitzer Prize winners Eric Foner and David Blight, who round out more than 50 expert interviews conducted by DuVernay.
