“The Birth of a Nation “ will hold a press conference at this year’s Toronto Film Festival with director/actor Nate Parker in attendance, Fox Searchlight announced Wednesday.
The announcement comes days after Parker broke his silence regarding a case in 1999 where he was charged with raping a 18-year-old female student while attending Penn State. Variety reported that the female student had died by suicide in 2012.
“I was acting as if I was the victim, and that’s wrong,” he told Ebony magazine in an interview published on Saturday. “I was acting as if I was the victim because I felt like, my only thought was I’m innocent and everyone needs to know. I didn’t even think for a second about her, not even for a second.”
Parker and the “Birth of a Nation” cast will face the press in a video junket on Sept. 10, a day after the film bows at the festival. A press conference is scheduled for Sept. 11.
Fox Searchlight acquired “Birth of a Nation” for $17.5 million after it premiered at Sundance in January. The movie tells the story of slave rebellion leader Nat Turner, played by Parker. It’s schedule to open wide on October 7, 2016.
More to come.
Lawrence Yee © 2016 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC