12 Upcoming Movies That Are Destined To Be Divisive

8. The Birth Of A Nation

Multi-talented Nate Parker’s directorial debut The Birth of a Nation, a labour of love seven years in the making, sparked a bidding war when it premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival with victors Fox Searchlight eventually securing rights to the film for a record-breaking $17.5 million, the biggest deal ever struck at the festival.

Written, produced and directed by Parker, the biographical drama is based on the true story of Nat Turner, a slave and preacher who after witnessing the brutality inflicted upon his fellow slaves led a rebellion in pre-abolition America that resulted in the death of some 50 white slave-owners and subsequently the killing of around 200 slaves and black freemen, many of whom were not involved in the revolt.

That Parker named his movie after a racist, pro-Ku Klux Klan film of the same name made in 1915 is provocative alone, though his choice to eschew certain sections of supposedly historical texts on Turner – that is, William Styron’s novel The Confessions of Nat Turner, itself based on a document detailing Turner’s statements to his lawyer Thomas Ruffin Gray who, it should be noted, was a wealthy white slave-owner himself – could stir up a bit of contention.

Though the director has pointed out the inherent bias of such accounts of Turner’s, The Birth of a Nation is bound to raise questions of historical accuracy as well as ruffling a few racist feathers.