'I wrestled with it': Ava DuVernay on Origin and the challenges of adapting Isabel Wilkerson's bestseller

Q31:46Ava DuVernay on her new film Origin

Adapting a non-fiction book into a narrative feature film is no mean feat. But adapting a non-fiction book that explores the social stratification system of caste, argues for a different way of thinking about inequality and presents solutions on how to move beyond society's artificial human divisions is even harder.

Ava DuVernay's new film, Origin, does just that. The film is based on the bestselling book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by the journalist and author Isabel Wilkerson. It follows Wilkerson (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) as she formulates her book's thesis and begins writing, while at the same time dealing with the grief of two tremendous personal losses.

DuVernay was first introduced to Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Oprah Winfrey in 2020, but the material wasn't something she immediately connected with.

"I wrestled with it," the filmmaker tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "I didn't understand it. I didn't agree with everything. And that bothered me because other folks were reading it and were saying that it was incredible and amazing.

"So I read it again, and it was something about that second read where I started to really, truly understand … That's when I started to consider, wow, there's something here that I believe we as a global community should be fluent in … and that it was worth trying to take it out of the anthropological thesis that is beautifully written in the book, and perhaps put it into an accessible major motion picture that more people would actually engage with."

Caste sits underneath race and gender ... they are built on top of this idea of human hierarchy.- Ava DuVernay

On her first read, DuVernay says she resisted the idea that inequality in America is the result of a hidden caste system, rather than racism and sexism.

"Caste sits underneath race and gender," she says. "It sits underneath racism and sexism and homophobia and Islamophobia and anti-Semitism and ageism and all of the isms. It is the foundation of them all. They are built on top of this idea of human hierarchy."

The filmmaker says she wanted Origin to create the "heart space" for radical empathy. "That is what I tried to conjure in the film because that is what I got from the book."

As for what she hopes the film will achieve, DuVernay says she just wants to contribute to a conversation that she doesn't feel enough of us are having.

"I think that we are in our own rooms, but we live in a house, and at some point you got to come out and you got to interact," she tells Power. "I don't have anything poignant or wise to say other than I'm longing for that conversation around the table."

WATCH | Official trailer for Origin:

The full interview with Ava DuVernay is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Ava DuVernay produced by Lise Hosein.