Ava DuVernay to direct film adaptation of ‘Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents’ at Netflix
The film is based on the book by Isabel Wilkerson
Ava DuVernay is bringing her talents back to Netflix. The talented creative has signed on to write, direct, and produce the film adaptation of NYT best-selling book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents for Netflix.
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The film is based on the book by Pulitzer Prize-winner Isabel Wilkerson. Here’s a rundown:
Drawing parallels between the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson outlines a revolutionary framework for understanding how caste plays out across civilizations, both historically and today. Backed by years of research, she identifies eight ideological pillars that underlie all caste systems. Using riveting stories from the lives of Martin Luther King Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, an ordinary single father and his toddler son, and many others, Wilkerson shows how the insidious undertow of caste is experienced by each of us every day.
She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their debasement of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.
Here’s the official film description:
Through a multiple-story structure, Caste examines the unspoken system that has shaped America and chronicles how our lives today are defined by a hierarchy of human divisions dating back generations.
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Caste is just one project to add to DuVernay’s long list of content at the streamer that includes 13th and When They See Us. She’s also working on the upcoming limited series, Colin in Black & White, based on the life of Colin Kaepernick.
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