Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts continues with the ambitious Ava DuVernay-directed drama Origin, with the script also written by DuVernay inspired by Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson’s groundbreaking book Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents.
The film explores caste systems around the world as a mode of oppression, with the narrative delving into the deep-seated intricacies of caste and how it underpins much of society’s discrimination, sometimes transcending even race. The film is for those looking to understand the world’s deeply entrenched systems, an ambitious, radical venture that highlights the horrors of caste and its intersections with race.
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor stars as the author, which traces the path she took to writing it while also experiencing her own tragedy. The creative and personal journey spans several continents and encompasses grief, revelation and the evils of historical stratification, stretching from antiquity to India’s Dalit caste, slavery in America and the segregation and violence of Jim Crow laws to the Nazis’ systematic persecution of Jews and the horrors of the Holocaust.
Jon Bernthal and Niecy Nash-Betts also star along with Vera Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Nick Offerman, Blair Underwood and Connie Nielsen.
The film, from Neon, had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, with DuVernay becoming the first Black American woman to have a film in competition; it got a nine-minute standing ovation from at its premiere. It recently had an awards-qualifying release in Los Angeles earlier this month and is set to hit theaters wide on January 19.
Click below to read the script.
