*Ava DuVernay’s documentary “The 13th” received a standing ovation for the filmmaker on the opening day of the New York Film Festival, according to awardsdaily.com.
DuVernay’s film could be headed for an Oscar nomination in the documentary category, which would make the “Selma” helmer the first African American female to be nominated for director for Documentary Feature.
As previously reported, “The 13th” chronicles the years after the Civil War when generations of young black men were arrested on trumped up charges and put into jail, allowing the Jim Crow South to hold on to their dominance.
“‘Prisons are the new plantations!’ may seem like sloganeering from a far-left protestor,” writes The Guardian’s Jordan Hoffman about the film. “But DuVernay’s effective film draws a strong, straight line from the abolition of slavery to today’s mass incarceration epidemic, explaining its root cause: money. Cheap prison labor is knotted up in the US economy in many unexpected ways, and the system is designed to get black men into jails early and often.”
The 13th will debut on Netflix and open in a limited theatrical run on October 7.
Watch the trailer below:
