Ava DuVernay brought the world premiere of 14th, her Netflix documentary about the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to the closing night of the 2026 New York Film Festival.

While the film’s topic may seem like the subject of a dry history lecture, DuVernay viscerally explores how the post-Civil War Constitutional provisions in the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments embody foundational ideals about the U.S. and charts a harrowing look at efforts to challenge the multifaceted 14th Amendment, dating back to Reconstruction and continuing through the political fallout from the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots and present-day immigration raids and mass deportations, not to mention the efforts by President Trump and other Republican leaders to end or restrict the Amendment’s well-known guarantee of birthright citizenship.

At the premiere, DuVernay and documentary participants Stacey Abrams and Sherrilyn Ifill made it clear: The threat to the future of U.S. democracy is upon us, and it’s time to fight.

“I’m not really interested in instilling hope,” DuVernay told The Hollywood Reporter of what she hopes viewers take away from the film. Instead, she said she wanted people to “feel ignited.”

“I’m interested in stirring the fight in people,” she added. “We’ll see what happens.”

Introducing her documentary, which she said she completed two weeks ago to make it as timely as possible, DuVernay sounded the alarm.

“The erosion of democracy doesn’t announce itself,” she said onstage before Friday night’s screening at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. “It happens one day at a time and one exception at a time. Maybe the most dangerous thing about losing democracy is you can live your ordinary life while it’s happening. We need to fight, and I hope you come out of this film wanting to fight hard.”

Though Netflix isn’t releasing 14th until after the 2026 midterm elections (it’s slated for a theatrical run starting Nov. 27 followed by a Dec. 4 streaming debut), Abrams and Ifill had urgent messages for voters ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms.

“We are in the midst of a competitive authoritarian state. This is no longer a theory,” Abrams, the founder of voting-rights organization Fair Fight Action and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate, told THR ahead of 14th‘s premiere. “The Democracy Index, one of the international measures of democracy, says the U.S. is no longer a true democracy. But that’s not a permanent situation. We have the ability to claim it back. That starts with midterm elections, but it means we also have to understand what we face so that we understand what we can do.”

She added, “It’s going to take this film to remind people that the Constitution is a promise, but it’s also an obligation. And this is also a reminder that we are responsible for holding the Constitution accountable for what it promises, and that is equal protection under the law.”

Ifill stressed the vital importance of this year’s elections, which will determine control of Congress for the final two years of President Trump’s second term.

“I think everything is at stake,” the former head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund told THR on the 14th red carpet. “This country has fractured in half before. 600,000 Americans were killed. We are at a point of fracture again. What we can learn from the 14th Amendment is our country can be refounded; it can be stitched back together. I would hope we can do it without the loss of life at that scale. I think that everything is on the line.”

Ifill ends the film telling viewers that it’s up to the people of this country to determine the future they want to see.

“We are all founders and framers,” she said. “This is the time, and you are the one.”