Ava DuVernay: ‘I’ve always fiercely held on to my blackness’
The acclaimed film-maker faces her most ambitious project yet with an expansive Netflix miniseries about the injustices faced by the Central Park Five
“I’d only be able to make this film now, having done everything I’ve done before,” says Ava DuVernay on an unseasonably warm afternoon in Manhattan. The acclaimed film-maker is answering questions at a ritzy, climate-controlled midtown hotel, one that’s in ironic proximity to Central Park, where, exactly 30 years ago, the event that inspired her latest project took place.
In the ambitious, expansive four-part Netflix miniseries When They See Us, DuVernay tells a difficult, prescient tale of racial profiling, injustice, lost innocence and media misinformation over a 25-year timespan. The result is an inspired and often troubling confluence of the themes that have motivated her throughout her career, from best picture Oscar nominee Selma to the mass incarceration documentary 13th. “It was very much in my mind that this will be some people’s first interaction not just with this case, but with all of the different layers of the criminal justice system,” she says.