Ava DuVernay’s ‘Origin’ Teaser Trailer

Award-winning studio NEON has acquired Oscar-nominee Ava DuVernay’s “Origin“, in advance of its world premiere tomorrow in competition at the Venice Film Festival.

The film will also have a gala screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and stars Oscar nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Niecy Nash-Betts, Vera Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Nick Offerman, Blair Underwood, Finn Wittrock, Jasmine Cephas-Jones and Connie Nielsen. The film hits theaters nationwide later this year.

Breaking ground as the first African-American woman director in competition in Venice Film Festival’s eighty-year history, DuVernay wrote, produced and directed “Origin,” which is inspired by the remarkable life and work of Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson as she pens her seminal book, “Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents.” While grappling with tremendous personal tragedy, Isabel sets herself on a path of global investigation and discovery. Despite the colossal scope of her project, she finds beauty and bravery while crafting one of the defining American books of our time.

Ava DuVernay made history as the first Black woman to direct a film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture with Selma, chronicling Dr. Martin Luther King Jr‘s visionary leadership during the landmark 1965 civil right marches. She was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar for 13th, her in-depth look at the U.S. prison system and how it reveals the nation’s history of racial inequality. Her acclaimed limited series “When They See Us,” for which she directed all episodes, was nominated for 16 Emmys in 2019. She was the first black woman to win Sundance’s Best Director Award in 2012 with her second feature, “Middle of Nowhere.”

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