Ava DuVernay Makes History At Venice Film Festival

Ava durvernay - Jeff Kravitz

The Venice Film Festival (VFF) revealed the lineup for its 80th edition on Tuesday, July 25, and its Official Competition featured works by five women filmmakers, including Ava DuVernay, who makes history as the first African American woman to be in selection. The selected films and filmmakers are Priscilla (Sofia Coppola), Origin (Ava DuVernay), The Green Border (Agnieszka Holland), Woman Of (Malgorzata Szumowska, Michal Englert), and Holly (Fien Troch).

There are 23 films in the competition overall. In an official statement, VFF said 32% of its submissions this year were from women filmmakers against 66% from male filmmakers; 60 movies did not declare a gender. DuVernay’s Origin will mark a significant landmark for Venice as the first film by an African American woman to play in the Official Competition.

The film is from a screenplay DuVernay wrote based on Isabel Wilkerson’s seminal, Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. It describes racism in the United States as an aspect of a rigid caste system of arbitrary hierarchies that stratify society and still divide the country today. Origin stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga, Niecy Nash-Betts, Audra McDonald, Nick Offerman, and Connie Nielsen.

DuVernay’s last project was Disney’s A Wrinkle In Time, starring Storm Reid, Oprah Winfrey, and Reese Witherspoon. Other DuVernay directorial credits include Netflix’s 13th and MLK-biopic Selma. Other accolades include becoming the first Black woman to win Sundance’s dramatic competition in 2012 with her second feature Middle of Nowhere, and serving on the Cannes Competition jury in 2018.

The 80th Venice Film Festival will run from August 30-September 9, 2023.