Ava DuVernay And Netflix Reconnect For 14th Amendment Doc

Ten years ago, Ava DuVernay and Netflix collaborated on a documentary about the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The 13th covered the amendment that abolished slavery in the United States, ratified on Dec. 6, 1865.

In the documentary, DuVernay asserted that the clause that allows for slavery to be abolished except for punishment for a crime has been abused by the criminal justice system. Activist/scholar Angela Davis, social justice attorney and activist Bryan Stevenson, and historians Jelani Cobb and Henry Louis Gates all appeared.

This new doc, which had not been announced prior by Netflix or DuVernay, is about the 14th Amendment, which covers equal protection and due process. It’s also the amendment that allows for birthright citizenship, a hotly contested topic in the Trump administration, which just lost its Supreme Court case in an attempt to abolish it.

The amendment was ratified on June 9, 1896, overturning the Dred Scott decision. Scott was a slave who argued that once his owner moved to a free state, that should have ensured the end of his bondage. Instead, he was moved again to his owner’s primary residence in Missouri and remained enslaved. But in 1857, the Supreme Court in Missouri ruled that Scott was property, not a U.S. citizen, and therefore had no rights.

“No doubt it will be said, when the unpleasant truth of the history of slavery in America is mentioned during this bicentennial year, that the Constitution was a product of its times and embodied a compromise which, under other circumstances, would not have been made, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall said in 1976. “But the effects of the Framers’ compromise have remained for generations. They arose from the contradiction between guaranteeing liberty and justice to all, and denying both to Negroes.”

Duvernay’s doc will show how that compromise has continued to this day as the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary.

“If 13th asked who gets caged, then 14th asks who gets counted,” DuVernay told Deadline‘s Dominic Patten, who first reported the story. “This is not a film about the past tense of freedom. I’m not interested in asking you to look back.”

She added, “The film asks what kind of country is being written beneath our feet now… while we’re busy believing the stories we’ve all been told.”

Interviewees this time around include former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, who was fired by the Trump administration last May; former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Sherilyn Ifill; former Arizona Republican senator Jeff Flake; California senator Alex Padilla; New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; and Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate and voting rights activist.

“Ava’s remarkable ability to bring history into conversation with the present made her last documentary, the seminal BAFTA-winning and Academy Award-nominated 13th, a cultural touchstone of the last quarter century,” Adam Del Deo, Netflix’s VP of Documentary Film and Series, told Deadline. “With 14th, she delivers another ambitious and thought-provoking documentary with the depth, artistry, and humanity that have come to define her work. We’re proud to continue our creative partnership with Ava and bring this powerful film to audiences around the world.”

The 14th heads to Netflix in the fall.