A decade after 13th opened the New York Film Festival, Ava DuVernay’s follow-up documentary 14th will world premiere as the Closing Night selection of the 64th edition. The Netflix-backed feature will be making its world premiere at Alice Tully Hall on Friday, October 9, with DuVernay and film participants in attendance, Film at Lincoln Center announced today.
Here’s the synopsis: “Ten years ago, filmmaker Ava DuVernay released her epochal documentary 13th (NYFF54 Opening Night), which argued that loopholes in the U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment—the abolition of slavery—led to today’s mass incarceration of Black Americans. That film was released on the eve of Donald Trump’s presidency; since then, an alarming number of our democratic norms and principles have eroded, further disenfranchising Black Americans. In response to our distressing new reality, DuVernay has created a thrillingly expansive sequel of sorts, which passionately and persuasively details how the tenets of the 14th Amendment, ratified post–Civil War, are now under systematic attack. Building her case with an extraordinary chorus of voices—including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), former Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ), current Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), legal minds Sherrilyn Ifill, Robert Chang, and Stacey Abrams, and social commentators like Donald T. Critchlow and Hasan Piker—DuVernay demonstrates how the 14th Amendment’s foundational principles of birthright citizenship, due process, equal protection under the law, and the prohibition for heads of state to engage in acts of insurrection all have been challenged to a dangerous degree in recent years. Drawing a direct line from the Reconstruction era to today, DuVernay’s film is a tough-minded reckoning with our moment of crisis. A Netflix release.”
“Exactly a decade after 13th opened the New York Film Festival, it feels especially meaningful to return with 14th as the 2026 Closing Night Selection,” said DuVernay. “NYFF has always been a place where films invite conversation rather than simply applause. To that end, 14th attempts to interrogate a promise powerful enough to change a nation—and controversial enough to divide it for more than 150 years. There’s no better place to begin that conversation than NYFF. I’m grateful to Dennis Lim and team for believing in work that asks difficult questions, and I’m honored to share this film with New York audiences first. On behalf of everyone who worked to tell this story, we hope it leaves people debating, questioning, and, above all, imagining what is still possible.”
“We are honored to close this edition of the New York Film Festival with Ava DuVernay’s supremely timely follow-up to 13th,” said Dennis Lim, NYFF Artistic Director. “14th is a movie for the moment that sees through the fog of the present. The great gift of this urgent and essential work is its clarity: Ava has made a film that shows us precisely what led us here, and what is at stake right now.”
The 64th New York Film Festival, which opens with James Gray’s Paper Tiger, takes place September 25 through October 12, 2026 with passes on sale now.