If you’re familiar with Emmy-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay, you know how hard it is to sit through any of her films without being at the edge of your seat and dabbing your eyes. DuVernay’s newest film, “Origin,” does more than simply rehash some of the worst atrocities known to man, like the Holocaust and racism in the U.S., but instead shows how these tragic events are all connected. 

The biographical drama is based on Isabel Wilkinson’s book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Throughout the book, Wilkinson questions if race and caste work hand in hand and if they both coexist in the same culture and reinforce one another. She learns this after traveling to Germany and India to compare the experiences of people during Nazi Germany and people who suffer under the caste system in India. Wilkinson asks herself a question that many are scared to ask. What if race and caste are two sides of the same coin? 

At first glance, DuVernay paints a perfect picture of Wilkinson, who Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor plays. She is a successful author who lives in a picture-perfect home with her loving, handsome husband and has a strong relationship with her mother, who is very ill. After giving a lecture, her former boss and editor Amari, played by Blair Underwood, approaches her to write a story about the recent death of Trayvon Martin. She declined because she wanted to focus on her work as an author and put her reporting days behind her. 

While Wilkinson consistently rejects Amari’s pleading to look into the Trayvon Martin case, she decides to take a look at the case for herself. Late at night, while her husband is asleep, she listens to the recording of Martin’s murder and is in horror when she hears the young boy scream and the sound of a gun going off. This makes Wilkinson rethink her original stance on not wanting to be involved in telling the story. But instead of writing solely about racism in the U.S., she decides to think outside of the box, identifying how race issues in the U.S. are similar to atrocities around the world where people discriminate against people of their race, like in Nazi Germany and India.

But this is not just a story about Wilkinson’s discoveries overseas and in her own country or about race and caste; it is a bittersweet tale of what it is like to have loved and lost. DuVernay sets the film's tone by showing how, little by little, Wilkinson’s world crumbles. Ellis-Taylor brought vulnerability and grace to the role, conveying that Wilkinson may need a minute to pick herself back up again but refuses to stay down no matter how unbearable her suffering may be.  

And there was a lot of suffering throughout the film. Wilkinson’s sister Marion, played by Niecy Nash, plays a crucial role in her life, giving her the strength she needs to stay strong during the lowest points of her life. The bond they shared would prove to be just what she needed to move forward and tell the story that would be one of the most transformative projects of her career. 

As a viewer, it's impossible not to root for Wilkinson as she experiences one letdown after another while working on her story. The pain she goes through in her own life allows her to come across with abundant empathy as she interviews different people, whether in Germany, India, or the U.S. 

Her empathy encourages people from all walks of life to open up to her and provide her with what she knew all along that as long as caste exists, the discrimination that we face will only continue. But even though tremendous pain and suffering is central to the story, there is hope that by shining a light on what is happening in society, we learn that we aren’t as different from each other as we thought.

"Origin" opens nationwide on January 19th.