PARK CITY, Utah — Nate Parker left a successful Hollywood acting career behind to make the movie that mattered most to him.

It took seven years for Parker to bring the story of slave rebellion leader Nat Turner to the screen. “The Birth of a Nation” premiered Monday at the Sundance Film Festival.

“I’ve poured everything that I am into making it,” the writer/director/actor/ producer said following an uproarious standing ovation. “I made this film for one reason, with hope of creating change agents, that people could watch this film and be affected.”

Turner was a slave who taught himself to read and became a preacher, bringing profits to his owner as he delivered God’s word to slaves throughout the state. But those travels showed him such injustice and cruelty that he had to act, and he led a violent rebellion that wiped out 60 slave owners.

“The Birth of a Nation” is a beautiful, painful and powerful film that juxtaposes pastoral settings with inhumane violence. Elliot Davis’ cinematography captures the ethereal natural settings of the American south and the heartbreaking brutality of slavery.

It introduces Nat Turner as a precocious boy who was deemed a leader by his African elders but who grew up a prisoner of slave owners in Virginia. A kindly white woman recognized his intelligence and introduced him to the Bible, and Turner was a believer. He preached and believed, ultimately deciding that God’s word justified bondage as much as it did freedom, and he preferred the latter.

Parker embodies Turner’s compassion and heart, on both sides of the camera. As Turner, his eyes communicate a deep understanding of human nature. As the writer, director and producer of the film, he channels that understanding into a moving work of art.

He said he wanted to create “a healing mechanism for America.”