After directing two independent features and one documentary, Ava DuVernay is poised for her Hollywood — and possibly Oscar — breakthrough with Selma, the MLK biopic that’s her biggest project to date.

And now Selma has been given an opening day of Christmas 2014 with a wide-release date of January 9, 2015 to position it as a heavyweight Academy Award contender. Were DuVernay to receive Best Director nod, she would become only the fifth woman to be nominated in that category and the first woman of color to do so.

The film will focus on the iconic 1965 march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery during the height of the black civil-rights movement.

The cast includes David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King, Jr., Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, Tom WIlkinson as Lyndon Johnson, Tim Roth as George Wallace, and producer Oprah Winfrey as Annie Lee Cooper, an older voting-rights activist.

[via Indiewire]