The Friday night screening marked the global premiere of the film, which caused a sensation and subsequent bidding war at its Sundance debut in January. The accuser killed herself in 2012.
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According to the Hollywood Reporter, the film itself got a 90-second ovation, while the cast got a two-minute standing ovation as they emerged onstage afterwards, a rarity for TIFF, whose artistic director described Birth of a Nation as “a story that needed to be told”.
Parker, who walked the red carpet for the first time since a rape case from his college days surfaced in headlines, introduced the film. Union says she was raped at gunpoint 24 years ago and took the role because she “related to the experience”.
Parker acted in, wrote and directed the film. AFI dean Jan Schuette said the school would hold a moderated discussion to explore issues of “messenger and message, gender, race and more”.
Sending “Birth” to Toronto for a series of five screenings – and having Parker accompany it (for a press conference and to the introduce screenings) – represented a high-risk, high-reward prospect for Fox Searchlight, given the attention that has surrounded the 1999 rape accusations which surrounded him. At Sundance in January, it won the festival’s Grand Jury and Audience prizes, sparking a bidding war between distributors. Last month, Parker was honoured by Sundance Institute with its Vanguard Award, joining past recipients including filmmakers Ryan Coogler (“Creed”) and Damien Chazelle (“Whiplash” and TIFF entry “La La Land”).
The film, about Nat Turner and the slave revolt he led in Virginia in 1831, was considered an early favorite for this year’s Academy Awards but has recently come under fire as a 1999 rape charge against writer-director-star Parker came to light in the press.
He said it was a “no brainer” that he would choose to tell the story on film.
Co-star Jason Stuart, who portrays plantation owner Joseph Randall, said he hoped the film could be part of a broader dialogue about the importance of valuing black lives.
“The point is we have a awful problem with the murder of young black people in this country, and something has to be done about it”.
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“We should all look at this film in the sense that this was a person that stood against a system that was oppressing people”, he told the audience.
