Having screened at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Oscar 2017 buzz was already building up for The Birth Of A Nation.

Winning both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize, this is the feature debut for writer and director Nate Parker, who also plays the leading role of Nat Turner, a former slave in America, leads a liberation movement in 1831 to free African-Americans in Virginia that results in a violent retaliation from whites.

When giving the Grand Jury Prize, the Sundance organisers stated: "In the words of the recently and dearly departed Alan Rickman, 'The more we're governed by idiots and have no control over our destinies, the more we need to tell stories to each other about who we are, why we are, where we come from, and what might be possible.' This year the winner embodies this notion singularly and accomplishes it with grand cinematic vision. Most of all, it challenges each of us to carry a riotous disposition for injustice and the system that preserve it everywhere and in doing so, it is both timeless and right on time."

The movie will be released in the States in October, but should arrive in Irish screens on January 20th 2017.