Ava DuVernay's widely acclaimed Origins arrives at VIFF Centre March 8, 12, and 13
Aunjanue L. Ellis-Taylor stars in a triumphant and unusual adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Aunjanue L. Ellis-Taylor and Jon Bernthal star in Ava DuVernay’s daring and ambitious take on the 2020 bestseller
Origin screens at Vancity Theatre March 8, 12, and 13
AVA DUVERNAY’S EARLY career as a documentarian was revisited by DOXA in 2016 with a screening of her glorious but little seen 2008 film This Is the Life, about a legendary cafe that became central to LA’s hip-hop scene in the ‘90s.
An ambitious career subsequent to that humble start has brought us both Selma (2014) and, less auspiciously, A Wrinkle in Time (2018), but with Origin, DuVernay appears to be in full command of her characteristic storytelling impulses, winning wide acclaim for a film that nearly wasn’t made after the project was dropped by Netflix. In adapting the 2020 bestseller Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents—already a tall order—DuVernay attempts no less than an interior and exterior appreciation of Isabel Wilkerson’s book, dramatizing the author’s experience of writing Caste while illustrating its view of bigotry and violence as a sweeping historical phenomenon.
Prompted by the Trayvon Martin killing, Wilkerson’s investigations take her through the Holocaust, slavery, and India’s caste system among other horrors, up to and including, in a scene singled out by most critics, her encounter with a plumber in a MAGA hat played by Nick Offerman. Aunjanue L. Ellis-Taylor stars as Wilkerson in a film which, if it isn’t already intriguing enough, inspired Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post to gush that it “seems to create a new cinematic language.” 
