Ava DuVernay says the past two years under President Donald Trump shaped 14th, her new documentary about the constitutional amendment that guarantees birthright citizenship, due process, and equal protection under the law.
In a new interview with The Guardian, DuVernay said the project grew out of Trump’s January 2025 executive order seeking to restrict birthright citizenship.
“It’s been a very tough two years,” she said, describing immigration agents pulling people from cars and neighbors disappearing from their communities. “When I would feel the rage and the fear, I put it into the film.”
From ‘13th’ to ‘14th’
14th is a follow-up of sorts to DuVernay’s Oscar-nominated 13th, the 2016 documentary that traced a line from slavery to mass incarceration. According to Netflix, the new film covers an amendment written after the Civil War and contested for more than 150 years, pairing archival research with current events.
“If 13th asked who gets caged, then 14th asks who gets counted,” DuVernay said in Netflix’s announcement.
The film features more than 50 interviews. Netflix lists Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Anna Paulina Luna, former Sen. Jeff Flake, Sen. Alex Padilla, Stacey Abrams, legal scholar Sherrilyn Ifill, and historians Eric Foner and David Blight among them. DuVernay told The Guardian she sent more than 300 interview requests to Republican elected officials, and only a handful agreed.
The documentary closed the 64th New York Film Festival with its world premiere on October 9. It also drew criticism there for digitally animating historical photographs, which DuVernay defended as a nod to Civil War-era stereoscopic images, The Blast reported.
When and Where to Watch
14th runs 1 hour and 48 minutes. It was produced by DuVernay, Spencer Averick, Tammy Garnes, and Paul Garnes through ARRAY.
The film opens in select U.S. and U.K. theaters on November 27, and premieres globally on Netflix on December 4.
For now, 14th is 16 days from theaters and 23 days from Netflix. If 13th changed how a generation talked about prisons, DuVernay is betting 14th can do the same for citizenship.
