On the eve of the US presidential election, Ava DuVernay is in Geneva. Guest of honor at the thirtieth edition of the GIFF (Geneva International Film Festival), she presented several of her films and series there, including the latest ones, Originwhich had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2023 but remains unreleased in France, like his first two feature films. Now free from supervision of the studies, the director of selma (2014) and the series in your eyes (when they see us, available on Netflix) produced by herself Origina film of crazy ambition. This fiction is an adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s essay, Breedbestseller published in the United States in 2020, unpublished in France. The author examines the history of racism in the United States in the dark light of the Indian caste system and the pseudo-legal edifice established by the Nazis in Germany. Ava DuVernay assures us, Origin It should be available in France on a streaming platform in the coming months.
How do you feel on the eve of the elections?
Very anxious, but also full of hope. It’s a stressful time. Many people have worked hard to first convey the idea that it is important to vote, and then that there is a stark contrast between the candidates. We’ll see. I’m nervous.
During the meeting with the public organized yesterday [dimanche 3 novembre] At the festival, you explained that you wanted “Origin” to be finished and released before the elections, because a film like that couldn’t exist after the elections…
We already have examples. We saw what happened to The apprentice [le film d’Ali Abbasi sur la jeunesse de Donald Trump, qui a eu du mal à trouver un distributeur malgré son succès lors de sa projection à Cannes]or certain films that want to present the Palestinian point of view. We have also seen that certain media have restricted their coverage of cinema based on the theme of the film. If Trump is elected, this will all get worse, artists’ voices will be weakened, and the conditions under which we work and reach audiences will be much more difficult.
Does the analysis presented in “Origin” apply to the electoral situation?
The idea of caste is quite simple to understand. It is based on a hierarchy among human beings, on how we decide who is at the top of the food chain. Immigrants, women, black people and queers are given less consideration. And we have a candidate who has said very clearly that he intends to solidify, to codify these caste hierarchies, to turn them into laws that are based on the idea that certain citizens are more valuable than others, which is the opposite of. the American promise. The United States never fulfilled its original promise, but it still stands. This candidate, Trump, says that he has nothing to do with that promise, that he is only interested in himself.
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