Ava DuVernay returns to Netflix with ‘14th’ documentary on citizenship

The Ava DuVernay “14th” documentary examines the amendment that established citizenship and equal protection after the Civil War.

Ava DuVernay is returning to Netflix with a question that cuts at the heart of American identity: Who gets counted as a citizen?

The filmmaker has completed “14th,” a new documentary examining the 14th Amendment and the continuing battle over citizenship, equal protection, and belonging in the United States. Deadline reported that Netflix will release the film later this year, nearly a decade after DuVernay’s Oscar-nominated documentary “13th” examined slavery’s constitutional exception and its connection to mass incarceration.

“If ‘13th’ asked who gets caged, then ‘14th’ asks who gets counted,” DuVernay said in a statement.

The documentary traces the amendment’s more than 150-year history through politicians, historians, and cultural voices while focusing on how its promises are being tested today. DuVernay said the film asks “what kind of country is being written beneath our feet now.”

Ratified in 1868 during Reconstruction, the 14th Amendment granted citizenship to people born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction, while guaranteeing equal protection under the law. It also nullified the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, which had denied citizenship to Black Americans.

That history returned to the center of national politics after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term seeking to restrict birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court rejected the order in June by a 6-3 vote, but Trump has continued pushing Congress to challenge the constitutional protection.

The fight carries particular weight for Black Americans because the amendment was adopted after slavery to secure rights the country had long denied them. Legal experts have warned that attacks on birthright citizenship draw from the same anti-Black theories once used to argue that Black people did not fully belong in the United States.

DuVernay’s 2016 documentary “13th” examined the connection between the Constitution’s slavery exception, the criminalization of Black Americans, and mass incarceration. “14th” extends that constitutional conversation into the present, asking how citizenship itself is defined and defended.

“14th” marks DuVernay’s return to nonfiction. Her broader body of work includes “Origin,” “Selma,” and “When They See Us.”

With “14th,” DuVernay is turning the Constitution into a present-tense story about citizenship, power, and the promises Americans are still fighting to keep.