Ava DuVernay‘s documentary “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.
The timing is poetic because “14th” is the follow-up to DuVernay’s seminal documentary “13th,” which opened the New York Film Festival in 2016. “13th” examined the U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment, the abolition of slavery, and argued that loopholes led to today’s mass incarceration of Black Americans. That film was released on the eve of Donald Trump’s first presidency. A sequel, of sorts, “14th” asserts the tenets of the 14th Amendment, which establishes birthright citizenship, due process and equal protection under the law, are now under systematic attack.
Through interviews with Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), legal experts Sherrilyn Ifill, Robert Chang, and Stacey Abrams, social commentators like Donald T. Critchlow and Hasan Piker, and many others, DuVernay delves into the 14th Amendment’s “foundational principles” as well as the “prohibition for heads of state to engage in acts of insurrection all have been challenged to a dangerous degree in recent years.”
