DuVernay's '14th' Doc Premieres at London Film Festival — SkimNews
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- Ava DuVernay screened her documentary "14th" on Monday as the Special Documentary Presentation at the London Film Festival, days after its October 9 debut at the New York Film Festival.
- "The 14th" runs just over 100 minutes and details how the 14th Amendment's foundational principles—birthright citizenship, due process, equal protection, and the prohibition on insurrection—are under what DuVernay calls "systematic attack," drawing a direct line from Reconstruction to Trump's second term.
- DuVernay said she had no intention of revisiting constitutional subjects after "13th" but became intrigued in summer 2024 when she heard Trump campaign on challenging birthright citizenship; he signed an executive order on the issue on the first day of his second term, which the Supreme Court later ruled unconstitutional.
- The production team reached out to more than 300 people considered Republican or MAGA, but only four responded; the film ultimately features Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Stacey Abrams, Bryan Stevenson, streamer Hasan Piker, and MAGA Republican Anna Paulina Luna alongside other voices.
- Producer Tammy Garnes said the team found a daily, real-time connection between breaking news and the 14th Amendment throughout production: "Every day we were making the movie, we documented something happening in the United States that shocked us."
- The London screening earned what the article calls a rare lengthy standing ovation from the LFF audience, which the source describes as "passionate but rarely emotive."
- "The 14th" debuts globally on Netflix on December 4, following a limited theatrical release in select U.S. and U.K. theaters beginning November 27.
Why it matters: DuVernay's film arrives as a real-time constitutional audit: the executive order on birthright citizenship that catalyzed the project has already been struck down by the Supreme Court, yet DuVernay says every other component of the 14th Amendment faces ongoing "systematic" challenge. By stitching Reconstruction history to the present day, the documentary reframes contested Trump-era policies as a single, decades-long assault on citizenship and due process—giving voters and educators a through-line narrative ahead of the film's December 4 Netflix release.
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