13th

The documentary starts from one clause in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It abolishes slavery, but leaves an exception: except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. Ava DuVernay begins in that gap and draws a line from the end of the Civil War to now: convict leasing, Jim Crow, the war on drugs and today's mass incarceration. Her argument is plain: slavery did not end, it was continued through the definition of crime, with heavy punishment of minor offences and the targeting of Black neighbourhoods as the instrument. It became the first documentary ever to open the New York Film Festival, in 2016. It went up on Netflix in October 2016. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 97 percent with an 8.8 average. It won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Documentary and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards. One number shows the weight it gathered later: during the George Floyd protests in 2020 its viewership rose by 4,665 percent. Who it is for: viewers who want the history of the American penal system and the question of race held together. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the other side to be heard. This is a case for the prosecution, not a defence, and it does not hide that.