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Ava DuVernay’s Origin is a fascinating drama, but it should have been a documentary
Ava DuVernay is an accomplished dramatic director who knows how to craft a human story around a crusading idea without letting one overwhelm the other. She proved that with 2014’s Selma, her Martin Luther King Jr. biopic concentrating on the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights marches. But DuVernay is also a documentarian: Her fiery Netflix film 13th, about the prison-industrial complex, proved she doesn’t need the comforting accoutrements of story and character to help her make a powerful point.