Jon Bernthal and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in Origin (Atsushi Nishijima/Neon)

Some films demand for conventions to be reformulated. That is precisely what director Ava DuVernay has done in her latest film, Origin, based on the 2020 nonfiction book Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson. The book is a lucid and enlightening exercise in academic research that explains the pillars behind social inequality, using the concept of caste to understand the interconnection between the Holocaust, racial segregation in the United States, and the caste system in India.

For someone who has successfully explored the advantages and limitations of historical fiction (Selma, the limited series When They See Us) and documentary (13th), the decision to adapt the book and focus on Wilkerson’s personal life initially sounds absurd. However, Origin acknowledges that behind ideas are real emotions and a labor of passion as much as a discipline. DuVernay is interested in Wilkerson’s interiority and the motivations behind the creation of her bestseller. The result is an incredibly ambitious film that feels deeply intimate, starting with the reenactment of the killing of Trayvon Martin (played by Miles Frost) in 2012, a crucial case that highlighted how deep the wounds and stigma of racism remain in America. When a colleague asks Wilkerson (sublimely portrayed by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) to write an article about it, she initially refuses, claiming that she currently writes only books that seek an answer and allow her to be “inside the story.”

Personal events completely change Wilkerson’s life when her husband, Brett (Jon Bernthal), and her mother, Ruby (Emily Yancy), die in a brief span of time. After a period of adjustment, Wilkerson finds the intellectual inspiration to seek the answers that initially eluded her regarding Martin’s case. She embarks on a research project that takes her to Germany and India. Some of fascinating real-life histories she discovers include the love story between a Nazi party member and his Jewish lover; African American anthropologists who traveled to the 1930s American South to document Jim Crow segregation; and the experiences of Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar (Gaurav J. Pathania), a member of the “lower caste” Dalit in India. Social limitations did not prevent him from challenging his economic fate.

This is risky and liberating filmmaking from an artist contending with the constraints of an art form until transforming it. (What’s fiction? What’s the best way to translate poetry and philosophy in a cinematic way?) Origin entangles the intellectually illuminating and the instinctually seductive through visual rhetoric that some might call liberal propaganda—a political thesis presented with the persuasive tools of drama. If that’s the case, you may wish all agitprop were this gorgeous. You can almost imagine the raised eyebrows that DuVernay faced when pitching this project to executives, much like we see Wilkerson facing refutations and doubts from colleagues and friends.

We may hear from some that Origin would have worked better as a documentary. That might be true, if the desired result was something simply didactic and conventional. The director, who also penned the screenplay, has created a different kind of cinema in which we allow ourselves to be moved by ideas as well as  narratives. This is the tour de force that DuVernay’s career has led to so far, and it will probably redefine what she does next. Meanwhile, the most discreetly revolutionary element behind this unusual epic about academic research is its absolute lack of cynicism and underlining hope. There’s faith in how obtained knowledge allows opportunities to amend and do things better.

Though it had an earlier limited release in 2023 to qualify for awards season, this is the best film from last year that you probably haven’t seen yet.