A number of well-received films premiered at this year’s Sundance film festival, but none caused a stir like Nate Parker’s directorial debut, The Birth of a Nation.
The first film to center on the story of Nat Turner, a slave in America who led a violent liberation movement in 1831 to free enslaved African Americans in Virginia, The Birth of Nation debuted to a huge buzz. It made good on the advance word-of-mouth when it sold to distributor Fox Searchlight for $17.5m – a Sundance record.
The film is now set to be released during the heat of awards season on 7 October.
Although critical reaction has been decidedly mixed (the Guardian’s Lanre Bakare called it “heavy-handed”, while Variety’s Justin Chang praised it as “searingly impressive”), the powerful subject matter and timeliness in the wake of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy and the Black Lives Matter movement, is sure to push the film the front of the pack when the race heats up. Like former Grand Jury prize winners Whiplash and Beasts of the Southern Wild, expect The Birth of a Nation to factor in the best picture Oscars race.
The trailer, set to Nina Simone’s haunting version of Billie Holiday’s anti-racism protest song Strange Fruit, is searingly powerful, detailing what led Turner to revolt against his slavemasters and lead a revolution.
“I want everyone to be challenged – it’s kind of like a battle cry from a film-making standpoint,” Parker said of his film to Deadline. “I wanted a film that people could watch and be affected – almost hold them hostage in the theater, where they have to see these images, and they have to see the parallels and the themes that are echoing right now in 2016.”
