Director Ava DuVernay visits Ron Clark Academy to talk about her new film “Origin”

ATLANTA — Some metro Atlanta students are getting a real life lesson on racism and how it’s portrayed in a new film shot in Georgia.

WSB-TV Get Reals with Director Ava Duvernay as she met with middle school students in Atlanta.

“I mean, what they’re doing here, the energy, the warmth, the community is everything that our firm origin is about,” Duvernay told Channel 2 Action News.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

The award-winning director made a stop this week at the prestigious Ron Clark Academy to talk to the students about her new movie “Origin.”

“This visit to Ron Clark Academy was so nourishing to me, something that I really needed to remind myself the ways which we can do things outside of the box.”

TRENDING STORIES:

• ‘You took away my soul;’ Mother seeks justice for son shot to death in southwest Atlanta
• Atlanta 911 dispatchers getting calls to move pillows, find out game scores and more
• ‘This is modern day bank robbery.’ Banks say ACH transfer fraud is on the rise

Origin is a biopic that is based on the book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Pulitzer Prize winning author Isabelle Wilkerson. The film written and directed by Duvernay describes racism in the United States as an aspect of the caste system.

“I want them to understand that underneath all the .... that we experience, there’s this thing called caste. There’s this idea that one person is better than another person based on something that is completely random. You skin color, your religion, your gender,” Duvernay said.

The students were excited to hear about the film shot partially in Georgia and how it relates to their real life experiences

“in other to soften those easyms, you gat to get down to the root, the origins, so i thing that came across from the film, from what i heard from the kids, so i’m really happy that they got the message.”

“Origin” was centered in Savannah, Georgia but also filmed in Montgomery, Alabama, New Delhi, India and Berlin, Germany.

The film hits theatres across the country Friday.

[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]

©2023 Cox Media Group