Origin

Origin (2023) is Ava DuVernay's historical drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Journalist Isabel Wilkerson chases a single uncomfortable idea across continents.

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor plays Wilkerson, who sets aside scholarly caution to trace how human societies keep sorting people into ranks. Her reporting carries her from Berlin to the villages of India to the segregated American South, stitching together three histories most people would never place side by side. At home she is burying her husband (Jon Bernthal) and her mother, and the research becomes the thing that holds her together. Niecy Nash and Vera Farmiga round out the cast.

The film grows out of Isabel Wilkerson's nonfiction bestseller Caste, and it does something unusual: it adapts an argument rather than a plot, filming the act of writing as if it were detective work. This one rewards viewers who come for ideas instead of spectacle. Stream Origin (2023) online on iFILM.