‘History gives us the blueprint’: director Ava DuVernay on immigrants, solidarity and hope in the age of Trump

It was in 2023, while promoting her feature film Origin, that Ava DuVernay became fired up to pursue her next documentary project. The Bafta-winning film-maker had been watching Donald Trump's re-election campaign, where he promised to challenge birthright citizenship if elected. "It was a startling, wild and crazy thing to say, and it was picking up steam," DuVernay says on a video call from her home in Los Angeles, as she points out that Trump's manifesto point was not an empty threat. In January 2025, the President signed an executive order to end the US Constitution's 14th amendment citizenship clause, which guarantees citizenship to every person born on American soil, irrespective of parental immigration status.

DuVernay had already made 13th, her Oscar-nominated 2016 film exploring the pitfalls of the 13th amendment regarding penal labour in the US prison-industrial complex. So she gathered a team to explore the historical ins and outs of the 14th amendment, drafted and ratified in 1868 as part of Reconstruction following the civil war, with the aim of looking to the past to understand the present state of US political discourse and corruption.

The resulting film, which features names including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson, was completed only a month ago and premiered at the New York film festival, where it was acclaimed by critics as "urgent" and "galvanising”. "Hands down, it's the hardest film I've ever made," she says. "This one kicked my butt." Here she discusses her hopes for the film and the real-time events that emboldened her efforts.

The thing that worked in 13th was making sure that we weren't talking above or below anyone. In both films, you could know nothing about this [subject] and come out feeling informed and not overwhelmed, or you could know a lot about this stuff and still get a refresher because it goes a bit deeper. In 13th, there's a lot of information; being able to break it up with moments in pop culture that speak to what we're talking about helps you take a mental break, so it doesn't feel like school or too dry. 

Our research team was small but mighty. In 14th, there are five sections; section one has three parts, so it was an investigation trying to piece it together. For a long time, I thought we weren't going to be able to do it because it doesn't connect back elegantly. It's unruly. It's messy. The startling and sad thing about it from a reality side – but great from a film-making side – is that, late in the game, we started to see the Trump administration attack all its parts. As a storyteller, it created a very cyclical way to bring the history into the present, in ways that people really understand in the current moment.

I wasn't trying to appeal to everyone. The goal was to tell the truth about the story. Facts are not political. Facts are just facts. The way that we process them, what we think about them, our opinion about them, our beliefs – those might be political. There are some facts that I thought more Republicans might be able to share to fill out that side of things. We [approached] over 300 sitting Republican representatives, senators, mayors of a major city, and governors, multiple times, but there was a blanket idea of "we will not talk to her". So I applaud the handful that did. It's for folks to take what they will from it.

Comedians are the last truth-tellers right now, especially here in the United States. It becomes difficult as a film-maker, an actor, or a musician, to speak your mind and not fear that you'll lose support from the big companies that put out our work. So it was interesting to track these great comedians throughout history, speaking truth to power. There aren't many that do it, so it was a small list. I'm a huge George Carlin and Paul Mooney fan, but as we looked around for more contemporary artists, we found Hasan Minhaj, Ronnie Chieng and Neal Brennan, who were speaking to parts of the film. It was fun watching all the comedy and picking the right clip.

I'm not a defender of the technology. I think that it's destructive and unfortunate that it's embedded in so many of our film-making tools. It's in Resolve, which handles the colour for every single film that you're watching. Every editor, unless they're cutting film on an old movie, uses Avid; it's in there. So, when I go to our team of 16 traditional VFX supervisors, editors and animators, it's inside the tools. I wanted to move a camera around inside the picture, take the “Ken Burns effect” [a technique of zooming into and panning across still photographs, named after the American documentarian] even further and create a stereoscopic image with layers. I think these are tricky topics that artists are grappling with as they make and express themselves in their films. But I don't think they're all equal. Others disagree with me, and that's OK. It's a worthy conversation. I just don't want it to obscure the film that we spent two and a half years making. It feels like a bit of a distraction. 

Yeah. We're in dark times, but the film shares that there have been darker times than this. We have pulled ourselves out of it when folks have understood what's in front of them – marshalled resources, talents, imagination and solidarity to stand against what tries to divide us. So I have a lot of hope.

It is a time of opportunity to embrace independence, to embrace the creation of new systems and new ways of telling and sharing stories, of cultivating audiences. I see it as a time that is quite bright. To say Hollywood is over is to ask: what's next? I have tried to move in that direction through all of my work, and invite other people to do the same.

Sure. I haven't announced the next one, but I'm doing all kinds of good stuff.

My mother.

In the car – LA traffic.

Read a history book. History gives us the blueprints and the guides.

14th is in select cinemas from 27 November and on Netflix from 4 December. The Nerve is hosting an exclusive screening of the documentary for members next Thursday, 19 November, in central London followed by a Q&A with Ava DuVernay hosted by our film critic Ellen E Jones. The event is at capacity but members can join the waitlist for returns. See the code in today’s newsletter