13th

Ava DuVernay connects the 13th Amendment's slavery loophole—"except as punishment for crime"—directly to America's mass incarceration crisis, where the U.S. holds 25% of the world's prisoners despite having only 5% of its population, outperforming #1 Dear Zachary's emotional focus by offering a broader, data-driven systemic indictment. The film traces policy after policy over 150 years, proving that incarceration rates rose 500% from 1970 to 2010, fueled by political fear-mongering. Released free on YouTube during 2020 protests, it has amassed 26 million views, a concrete metric of its urgent relevance, and features interviews with activists and scholars who reveal that 1 in 3 Black men in the U.S. face prison time.