A decade after “13th,” Ava DuVernay and Netflix are returning to the Constitution. The streamer announced today that the filmmaker has quietly already directed “14th,” a new documentary examining the enduring fight over citizenship and the 14th Amendment, which will premiere on Netflix later this year.
The film is conceived as a follow-up to DuVernay’s extraordinary 2016 documentary “13th,” which used the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery to trace a direct line from emancipation through racial criminalization, mass incarceration, and the prison-industrial complex. The film won the BAFTA for Best Documentary and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature.
“14th” moves to the next Reconstruction Amendment. Written in the aftermath of the Civil War, the 14th Amendment established birthright citizenship and constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection. Yet its definition of who belongs in America has remained bitterly contested for more than 150 years.
“If ‘13th’ asked who gets caged, then ‘14th’ asks who gets counted,” DuVernay said in a statement. “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.”
Combining archival scholarship with present-day political and cultural debates, “14th” features more than 50 interviews conducted by DuVernay. Participants include Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, former Republican Senator Jeff Flake, Democratic Senator Alex Padilla, Stacey Abrams, legal scholar Sherrilyn Ifill, historian Robert Chang, conservative author Donald T. Critchlow, and political commentator Hasan Piker.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historians Eric Foner and David Blight also appear in the film, which brings together lawyers, politicians, scholars, historians, curators, and cultural figures to consider an unresolved question: Who gets to belong?
“13th” remains one of DuVernay’s most searing and authoritative works, assembling history, statistics, archival material, and testimony into a commanding indictment of American racism and oppression. As our review argued at the time, the film demonstrated how political rhetoric, corporate interests, police militarization, and the criminalization of Black communities combined to undermine the promise of freedom following abolition.
“Ava’s remarkable ability to bring history into conversation with the present made her last documentary, the seminal BAFTA-winning and Academy Award-nominated ‘13th,’ a cultural touchstone of the last quarter century,” Netflix documentary chief Adam Del Deo said. “With ‘14th,’ she delivers another ambitious and thought-provoking documentary with the depth, artistry, and humanity that have come to define her work.”
From ARRAY, “14th” is directed by DuVernay and produced by DuVernay, Spencer Averick, Tammy Garnes, and Paul Garnes.
Netflix has not announced an exact release date, but the streamer says “14th” will arrive later this year. Given the Oscar nomination and cultural impact of “13th,” expect Netflix to position the sequel as a significant fall festival and awards contender.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2007. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
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