{"id":301933,"date":"2026-07-21T17:12:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T17:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/301933\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T17:12:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T17:12:26","slug":"new-york-film-festival-to-close-with-ava-duvernays-14th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/301933\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Film Festival to Close with Ava DuVernay’s 14th’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The world premiere of Ava DuVernay<\/a>\u2018s latest documentary feature, \u201c14th,<\/a>\u201d is set to close the 2026 New York Film<\/a> Festival (NYFF<\/a>). It\u2019s a follow-up of sorts to her incarceration documentary \u201c13th,\u201d which, 10 years ago and on the eve of President Trump\u2019s first term, opened the NYFF.<\/p>\n

Film at Lincoln Center announced \u201c14th<\/a>\u201d as the closing-night selection on Tuesday, having unveiled James Gray\u2019s \u201cPaper Tiger\u201d as the opener<\/a> last week. NYFF runs September 25-October 12 in New York City.<\/p>\n

\u201c14th\u201d tackles, of course, the 14th Amendment, which established the tenets of birthright citizenship that Trump\u2019s presidency has disrupted \u2014 the Amendment that states, \u201cAll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'Children<\/a> \"THE<\/a> <\/p>\n

Per NYFF\u2019s synopsis, \u201cTen years ago, filmmaker Ava DuVernay<\/a> released her epochal documentary \u201913th\u2019 (NYFF54 Opening Night), which argued that loopholes in the U.S. Constitution\u2019s 13th Amendment\u2014the abolition of slavery\u2014led to today\u2019s mass incarceration of Black Americans. That film was released on the eve of Donald Trump\u2019s presidency; since then, an alarming number of our democratic norms and principles have eroded, further disenfranchising Black Americans. In response to our distressing new reality, DuVernay has created a thrillingly expansive sequel of sorts, which passionately and persuasively details how the tenets of the 14th Amendment, ratified post\u2013Civil War, are now under systematic attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

NYFF continued, \u201cBuilding her case with an extraordinary chorus of voices \u2014 including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), former Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ), current Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), legal minds Sherrilyn Ifill, Robert Chang, and Stacey Abrams, and social commentators like Donald T. Critchlow and Hasan Piker \u2014 DuVernay demonstrates how the 14th Amendment\u2019s foundational principles of birthright citizenship, due process, equal protection under the law, and the prohibition for heads of state to engage in acts of insurrection all have been challenged to a dangerous degree in recent years. Drawing a direct line from the Reconstruction era to today, DuVernay\u2019s film is a tough-minded reckoning with our moment of crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

As with \u201c13th,\u201d Netflix will also release \u201c14th\u201d as part of this year\u2019s awards season. \u201c13th\u201d received a nomination for Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars in 2017. DuVernay\u2019s 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. biopic was a Best Picture nominee; her last film was 2023\u2019s narrative feature \u201cOrigin,\u201d inspired by Isabel Wilkerson\u2019s \u201cCaste: The Origins of Our Discontents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cExactly a decade after \u201913th\u2019 opened the New York Film Festival, it feels especially meaningful to return with \u201914th\u2019 as the 2026 Closing Night Selection,\u201d said DuVernay. \u201cNYFF has always been a place where films invite conversation rather than simply applause. To that end, \u201914th\u2019 attempts to interrogate a promise powerful enough to change a nation \u2014 and controversial enough to divide it for more than 150 years. There\u2019s no better place to begin that conversation than NYFF. I\u2019m grateful to Dennis Lim and team for believing in work that asks difficult questions, and I\u2019m honored to share this film with New York audiences first. On behalf of everyone who worked to tell this story, we hope it leaves people debating, questioning, and, above all, imagining what is still possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are honored to close this edition of the New York Film Festival with Ava DuVernay\u2019s supremely timely follow-up to \u201913th,\u2019\u201d said Dennis Lim, NYFF Artistic Director. \u201c\u201914th\u2019 is a movie for the moment that sees through the fog of the present. The great gift of this urgent and essential work is its clarity: Ava has made a film that shows us precisely what led us here, and what is at stake right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world premiere of Ava DuVernay\u2018s latest documentary feature, \u201c14th,\u201d is set to close the 2026 New York…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[110073,114474,3056,749,9,24,55,54,56,94810],"class_list":["post-301933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-14th","tag-ava-duvernay","tag-festivals","tag-film","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-nyff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}