Ava DuVernay’s ambitious next act
THE FILMMAKER ON THE CHALLENGING PROCESS BEHIND HER LINE-BLURRING NEW FILM, ORIGIN
WORDS JOHN NUGENT
THE CHARACTER
THE 2020 BOOK Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents —a non-fiction study by Isabel Wilkerson of caste systems in India, Nazi Germany and the US —is not exactly an obvious choice for a cinematic adaptation. It wasn’t for Ava DuVernay, in any case. “It was captivating,” the filmmaker recalls of reading it. “But it was a hard book. I had to read it several times.
Eventually, it started to form in my head as something that needed to be shared.” DuVernay made the unusual decision to turn this factual book into Origin, a semi-fictionalised narrative film. Here’s how she did it.