Ava DuVernay on her ‘rebellious and radical’ new film ‘Origin’ and the ‘caste system of Hollywood’

“Origin” from director Ava DuVernay explores “uncomfortable questions.” She hopes the movie sparks conversation.

“We were told, ‘You probably shouldn’t do that.’ ‘That’s not going to work.’ But we did it anyway.” Ava DuVernay is smiling, but there’s a steeliness to her words. The director, writer and producer is no stranger to carving her own path. With “Origin,” her latest film, she was forced to dig in a little deeper. An adaptation of bestseller “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” the book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson makes the case it is not race but the structures of caste that best explain social inequality. Using the United States, India and Nazi Germany as examples, “Caste” was a non-fiction sensation when it was released in 2020, namechecked by Barack Obama, temporarily banned by a library in Texas, and the source of fierce debate. But you’d be hard-pushed to say the 500-page work of social anthropology had “film” written all over it. And yet for DuVernay, the appeal was obvious. Her filmography has sought to reckon with the history and present realities of American inequality, injustice and oppression (see: “Selma,” “The 13th,” “When They See Us”). To do so, DuVernay has flitted between documentary and narrative fiction as she saw fit. Her latest film represents the confluence of her talents, blending historical re-enactments, narrative fiction and surreal imagery in a roving journey through the mind of Wilkerson as she forms her thesis. DuVernary has bent the medium of cinema to realize “Origin,” and may have collected a few naysays perturbed by her narrative invention, but for others it’s a thrilling piece of hybrid filmmaking, breaking late into the awards season picture. DuVernay’s cast are clearly in awe.