Acclaimed filmmaker Ava DuVernay adapts Pulitzer-winning journalist and author Isabel Wilkerson’s landmark 2020 book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which takes a deep dive into the notion of caste and how it relates to bigotry and systemic racism. It’s a big, meaty, thought-provoking tome, so we’re keen to see how she’s wrangled it into a dramatic form.
When is Origin being released in Australia?
Origin is screening in Australian cinemas right now.
Origin (2023)
What is Origin about?
Following the murder of Trayvon Martin and personal tragedy in her own life, Isabel Wilkerson travels the world to try and understand what underpins social division and hatred. Her journey takes her from the United States, where she investigates the history of slavery and Jim Crow, to Germany, where the Nazis naturally get a look-in, to India with its rigid caste system that oppresses…well, almost everyone, but specifically the Dalit people, historically known as the “untouchables”.
Along the way, DuVernay inserts historical interstitial sequences to contextualise the theoretical, as Wilkerson tries to find a Grand Unified Field Theory for… well, all of this. To say the film is ambitious is a massive understatement.
The cast of Origin
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (The Color Purple) is Isabel Wilkerson; once and future Punisher Jon Bernthal is her husband, Brett Hamilton; Blair Underwood is Amari Selvan, her editor; Emily Yancy is Ruby Wilkerson, her mother; Niecy Nash is Marion Wilkerson, her cousin; Finn Wittrock is August Landmesser, (probably) the guy standing up against the Nazis in that famous photo you’ve seen; Broadway star Myles Frost is Trayvon Martin; and a stellar supporting cast including Connie Nielsen, Nick Offerman, Victoria Pedretti, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Vera Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Stephanie March, and Donna Mills fill out the ensemble.
Origin trailer
Why we’re excited about Origin
From her debut feature I Will Follow to Selma to When They See Us, DuVernay has never shied away from big, challenging topics, and this looks like her most ambitious and accomplished work yet.
