'Birth of a Nation' sets sales record at Sundance

UPDATE:  The Birth of a Nation set a new sales record Tuesday at the Sundance Film Festival, netting a $17.5 million distribution deal from Fox Searchlight. According to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, an overnight bidding war included escalating offers from The Weinstein Co., Netflix and Paramount.

PARK CITY, Utah — The Birth of a Nation got a standing ovation, and it hadn't even started yet.

Monday afternoon, the crowd rose to salute director/star/writer Nate Parker before it had seen a frame of his slavery drama, which centers its powerful story around a slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in 1831.

The timing was nothing short of incredible. Diversity discussions had dominated Sundance Film Festival for five days, after the Academy Awards announced all-white acting nominees for the second year in a row.

Then The Birth of a Nation arrived, starkly and thoughtfully excavating the roots of American racism.

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"I made this film for one reason — in the hope of creating change agents," said Parker during the film's Q&A. "You can watch this film and see there are systems that were in place that were corrupt and corrupted people. And the legacy of that still lives with us."

Born a slave in Virginia, Turner was taught to read as a child and grew up to become a preacher. He had an affable relationship with his master, Samuel (Armie Hammer), and was able to marry a slave, Cherry (Aja Naomi King). But slave abuse increased as plantation owners became more paranoid, including an increasingly savage Samuel.

No longer able to justify their world through Bible verses, Turner ignites a slave rebellion, ultimately leading a 48-hour bloody attack.

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"A labor of love pursued by Parker for seven years, the film vividly captures an assortment of slavery’s brutalities while also underlining the religious underpinnings of Turner’s justifications for his assaults on slaveholders," wrote The Hollywood Reporter.

Birth is "certain to be the most widely discussed and rousingly received film in the U.S. dramatic competition at Sundance this year," Variety said.

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On stage, Parker described most films dealing with slavery in the South as "desperately sanitized." Despite success found by recent films 12 Years a Slave and Django Unchained, he spoke of an ongoing "resistance to dealing with this material. So when the script goes out, people read it, they say, 'People won't want to see this. Another slave movie? Haven't we seen those?' "

So will rapturous applause at Sundance turn into a mega-million distribution deal? The Wrap reported that a bidding war had reached $16 million.