Portugal Colonial - 'Door is open' says first black US director at Venice

"For black filmmakers, we're told that people who love films in other parts of the world don't care about our stories and don't care about our films," DuVernay told reporters.

"I can't tell you how many times I've been told: 'Don't apply to Venice, you won't get in.' And this year, something happened that hadn't happened in eight decades before: an African-American woman in competition.

"So now that door is open, I trust and hope the festival will keep it open," she added.

The first black woman to compete at the Venice Film Festival was France's Alice Diop, who won the runners-up Grand Jury Prize last year with "Saint Omer".

DuVernay has broken down many doors for black women in her country, however, as the first to earn best director at the Sundance Film Festival (with 2012's "Middle of Nowhere") and a Golden Globe nomination for 2015's "Selma" about Martin Luther King.

"Origin" is based on a book by journalist Isabel Wilkerson, "Caste", which looks at the roots of racism in the United States as well as anti-Semitism in Germany and the caste system in India.

DuVernay, 51, said she was "fascinated by the ideas that Isabel Wilkerson had embedded in this book".

"Everything in the film that is about her life is... not in the book. So we talked for about a year, she was very generous, an incredible storyteller," she added.

The film stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, known from recent hit "King Richard".

After the tragedies of slavery, segregation and the Holocaust, "the question is: how are we going to create a new future?" said DuVernay.

"That's what really motivates me in my work," she added. "When you are an artist, you have the responsibility to create a world that does not exist."

L.Carrico--PC