(Updated 12/15/2023)
Filmmaker Ava DuVernay has been working in television and documentaries for the last few years — her most recent theatrical movie was A WRINKLE IN TIME, released in 2018. But she's back with ORIGIN, a dramatic movie which is based on a non-fiction book. That's not a big swerve from DuVernay, whose breakout movie, SELMA, was a dramatic retelling of the 1965 marches from Selma to Montgomery Alabama, led by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
ORIGIN is rooted in a more modern context. Many specifics of the film are somewhat mysterious at the moment, but there is a teaser trailer and some information to give you more context for what DuVernay's new movie is all about.
When Does Origin Come Out?
ORIGIN has opened in New York and Los Angeles for an award-qualifying run, and the wide release will be on January 19.
Watch the Full Origin Trailer
The first trailer for ORIGIN was more about establishing a poetic tone than showing off the movie's dramatic angle.
The first full trailer for ORIGIN, which you can see above, tells us more about the film and the core relationships that shape the life of Isabel Wilkerson as she seeks to write a book that encompasses an ambitiously expansive vision of large-scale human relationships.
Even the trailer plays as ambitious, which helps support the glowing review pull-quotes chosen to highlight the movie's unusual screenplay and structure.
Origin Is Based on a Book
ORIGIN is based both on the book "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents," by Isabel Wilkerson, and on Wilkerson's own life and the events that led to her writing the book. The studio synopsis of the movie says "Grappling with tremendous personal tragedy, writer Isabel Wilkerson sets herself on a path of global investigation and discovery as she writes Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents."
One can easily dig into interviews with Wilkerson to learn about the particular details that played upon the creation of the book, but in the interest of avoiding spoilers we're not going to describe them in detail here.
Who's in the Cast of Origin?
We know that Aunjanue Ellis plays Isabel Wilkerson; she's seen prominently in the trailer above. Jon Bernthal plays Isabel's husband, Brett, and the cast also features Vera Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Niecy Nash-Betts, Nick Offerman, and Blair Underwood.
Additionally, there are roles for Donna Mills, Leonardo Nam, Connie Nielsen, Victoria Pedretti, and Mieke Schymura, among others. We'll know a lot more about who each actor plays soon.
That said, THR notes that the movie features depictions of many real-life historial figures, both modern and not, who play into some of the movie's central themes. There are "Trayvon Martin (Myles Frost); Indian scholar and reformist B. R. Ambedkar (Gaurav J. Pathania); African-American anthropologists Allison and Elizabeth Davis (Isha Blaaker and Jasmine Cephas Jones, respectively); and German citizen August Landmesser (Finn Wittrock), the latter of which was depicted in a now-famous photograph refusing to give the Nazi salute."
Origin Plays With Movie Structure in Surprising Ways
ORIGIN is not just a biopic. DuVernay works to merge dramatic and almost documentary storytelling — which makes a lot of sense, given her own history with both forms — in a way that is anything but typical.
She told THR, "I’ve done historical work before, whether it be Selma, 13th or even contemporary history in When They See Us. I feel so often that that history is isolated — “It’s Black history. It’s really important to them, and it’s on the periphery of the main thing.” That’s how it’s often seen, right? One of the reasons why I was attracted to the project is there’s a lot of people involved in this one. We know all of history is interconnected. It all touches each other. If it hasn’t reached you yet, it’s going to — they’re gonna come knocking on your door at some point. What attracted me to this story is all the multiple touchpoints. zig-zagging through history across continents and cultures talking about the same phenomenon. Is there a way to put it together?"
ORIGIN opens wide on January 19.
All images courtesy of NEON.