Somebody get Stacy Dash on the phone.
Birth came to Sundance with big expectations, with many major buyers seeing it as an Oscar contender, especially given the controversy surrounding the past two years of #OscarsSoWhite hashtags. Parker, 36, quit acting for two years to realize the passion project that he wrote, produced, directed and toplined. He put in $100,000 of his own money to fly around the country to talk to anyone who might want to finance it. A dozen investor groups — which included former NBA player Michael Finley and San Antonio Spurs star Tony Parker — cobbled together the film’s $10 million budget.
Just as the world-premiere Sundance Film Festival screening of The Birth of a Nation was about to end on Monday, filmmaker and star Nate Parker snuck out of the Eccles Center theater and into a side room.