Director Ava DuVernay’s films often find her traversing through time and space. Her 2014 film Selma centered on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and work during the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches and the passage of The Voting Rights Act that same year. Her follow-up to Selma, 2018’s A Wrinkle in Time, is based on the 1962 sci-fi/fantasy adventure book by Madeleine L’Engle.
Her latest film Origin continues on this epic path. The film stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and is based on Isabel Wilkerson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. DuVernay talks to The Treatment about the importance of showing domestic spaces in her films. She explains why her films often start with loss. And she talks about why she doesn’t want her films to have answers, only questions.