Ava DuVernay’s ‘14th’ is coming to Netflix this December

The documentary will stream Dec. 4 following its New York Film Festival premiere and a limited theatrical release.

Ava DuVernay’s “14th” documentary now has a Netflix premiere date, with the filmmaker’s latest project set to stream globally Dec. 4 after a limited theatrical run. The new release schedule follows TheGrio’s July coverage of the documentary announcement and comes 10 years after DuVernay’s Oscar-nominated “13th” examined mass incarceration through the Constitution’s 13th Amendment.

Netflix said the documentary will open in select U.S. and U.K. theaters Nov. 27 before arriving on the streaming service one week later. The film will first make its world premiere Oct. 9 as the Closing Night selection of the 64th New York Film Festival.

The documentary focuses on the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War and central to questions of citizenship, due process and equal protection under the law. DuVernay frames the film around a question that remains deeply contested in American life: who gets to belong?

“If ‘13th’ asked who gets caged, then ‘14th’ asks who gets counted,” DuVernay told Netflix.

The documentary features more than 50 interviews with historians, lawyers, scholars, politicians and cultural commentators. Participants include Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Anna Paulina Luna, former Sen. Jeff Flake, Sen. Alex Padilla, Stacey Abrams, Sherrilyn Ifill, Robert Chang, conservative author Donald T. Critchlow and cultural critic Hasan Piker. Pulitzer Prize-winning historians Eric Foner and David Blight also appear.

The project returns DuVernay to the New York Film Festival 10 years after “13th” opened the event in 2016. Film at Lincoln Center has described “14th” as a follow-up of sorts to that Oscar-nominated documentary, with the new film tracing how the 14th Amendment’s promises have been challenged across more than 150 years.

DuVernay directed “14th” and produced it with Spencer Averick, Tammy Garnes and Paul Garnes through ARRAY. Her credits include “Selma,” “Middle of Nowhere,” “A Wrinkle in Time,” “Origin,” “When They See Us” and “Queen Sugar.”