How Trump’s America Influenced Ava DuVernay’s New Documentary, ’14th’
As Ava DuVernay‘s new documentary, “14th,” prepares to debut at this year’s New York Film Festival on Oct. 9, the filmmaker is opening up about the rocky path it took to get the film to the screen. She’s detailing how the pressures of President Donald Trump’s second term, hesitancy from Hollywood power players and industry shifts threatened its release.
As The Root previously reported, “14th” is set to examine the Constitution’s 14th Amendment (which grants birthright citizenship and due process) and chronicle the vicious 150-year-long battle over it. Threading deep archival scholarship with piercing headlines of today, the forthcoming documentary brings together legal minds, politicians, historians and cultural voices in direct conversation about who gets to belong.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Oscar-nominated director spoke about how her focus for the project kept shifting due to various actions taken by the Trump administration. She detailed how the film initially centered on Trump’s push to challenge birthright citizenship, but the scope expanded as other parts of the 14th Amendment became even more relevant.
Related: ‘Origin’ Director Ava DuVernay: “I See Cinema As A Weapon”
As production continued, DuVernay documented the stories of Black political leaders whose positions were getting caught up in the controversy, including former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch. As a result, her creative process became much trickier.
“This movie kicked my butt because it was like building a plane midflight—so much stuff was coming in every day, everything was happening,” DuVernay said in part. “All my feelings about everything happening in the past three years— creatively, politically, socially, culturally—are being put into this film.”
As if presidential pressures weren’t enough, she also had to contend with Hollywood’s hesitancy to back and promote more political projects in the current climate. As streamers either delayed or cancelled certain projects outright and legacy studios merged around her, DuVernay revealed she was worried Netflix would back out of the deal or try to make her change the focus of her project. Thankfully, that didn’t happen as the mega-streamer allowed her the space to do what she needed.
“I was really hopeful that they would continue to support the filmmakers in the way that they’ve established, and they did,” she explained. “I was hoping they would hold their stance under what has felt like a lot of pressure to do otherwise…In this climate, I would’ve expected a little more ‘helicopter mom.’”
Still, DuVernay did divulge that she’d been “cautioned” about the content and her “points of view on all kinds of things” related to the project. She added that she thinks “artists and executives feel a lot less free” and that she has some level of fear.
That’s probably why the acclaimed director made it abundantly clear that her upcoming film isn’t meant to be a cinematic reckoning for Trump, since he’s merely “a small cog in a wheel that’s been rolling for a very, very long time.” Instead, she wants her next work to be seen as a reflection of both the history it chronicles and the moment that shaped her creativity.
“COVID, wars, Gaza — it’s been quite a decade, and I don’t think we, as people who experience it, appreciate what we’re living through. They’re going to study this time. My question is, how are we getting our arms around that artistically? This film is like an essay. We were writing through it, about what we discovered, how we felt, and what it means,” she said.
“14th” will premiere globally on Netflix on Friday, Dec. 4, following a theatrical release in select U.S. and U.K. theaters beginning Friday, Nov. 27.
