It is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches which were initiated and directed by James Bevel[5][6] and led by Martin Luther King Jr., Hosea Williams, and John Lewis.

Four black girls walking down stairs in the Birmingham, Alabama 16th Street Baptist Church are killed by a bomb set by the Ku Klux Klan.

Harassing phone calls with a recording of sexual activity implied to be King and another woman lead to an argument with Coretta; she knows it is a fabrication, but the strain of constant death threats has taken its toll on her.

The marchers, including John Lewis of SNCC, Hosea Williams of SCLC, and Selma activist Amelia Boynton, cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge and approach a line of state troopers who put on gas masks.

President Johnson speaks before a Joint Session of Congress to ask for quick passage of a bill to eliminate restrictions on voting, praising the courage of the activists.

On June 18, 2008, Variety reported that screenwriter Paul Webb had written an original story about Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon B. Johnson for Celador's Christian Colson, which would be co-produced with Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment.

[32] In 2010, reports indicated that The Weinstein Company would join Pathe and Plan B to finance the $22 million film,[33] but by the next month Daniels had signed on with Sony to re-write and direct The Butler.

[35] In July 2013, it was said that Ava DuVernay had signed on to direct the film for Pathé UK and Plan B, and that she was revising the script with the original screenwriter, Paul Webb.

[38] Actors who had confirmed in 2010 but who did not appear in the 2014 production include Robert De Niro, Hugh Jackman, Cedric the Entertainer, Lenny Kravitz, and Liam Neeson.

[18][48] On April 22, Lorraine Toussaint joined the cast to portray Amelia Boynton Robinson, who was very active in the Selma movement before SCLC arrived and was the first African-American woman in Alabama to run for Congress.

[11] On May 8, Tessa Thompson was cast to play the role of Diane Nash, a civil rights activist and founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

[27][29] On June 10, it was announced that the film's producer, Oprah Winfrey, would portray Annie Lee Cooper, a 54-year-old woman who tried to register to vote and was denied by Sheriff Clark—whom she then punched in the jaw and knocked down.

[22] Jeremy Strong joined the cast to play James Reeb, a white Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston who was murdered in Selma after the second attempt at the march.

[25] On June 12, it was reported that Giovanni Ribisi joined the cast to play Lee C. White, an adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson on strategies regarding the Civil Rights Movement.

[17] Dylan Baker was added to the cast on July 17 to play FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who carried out extensive investigations of King and his associates.

[52] In Newton County, Georgia, filming took place at Flat Road, Airport Road, Gregory Road, Conyers, Brown, Ivy and Emory Streets, exteriors on Lee Street, outside shots of the old Newton County Courthouse, shots of the Covington Square, and an interior night shoot at the Townhouse Café on Washington St.[53] In Alabama, scenes were shot in Selma, centering on the Bloody Sunday march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and in Montgomery, Alabama, where, in 1965, King led civil rights demonstrators down Dexter Avenue toward the Alabama State Capitol at the conclusion of the third march from Selma.

"[72] Joe Morgenstern, writing for The Wall Street Journal, wrote: "At its best, Ava DuVernay's biographical film honors Dr. King's legacy by dramatizing the racist brutality that spurred him and his colleagues to action.

"[73] A. O. Scott of The New York Times praised the acting, directing, writing, and cinematography, and wrote: "Even if you think you know what's coming, Selma hums with suspense and surprise.

"[74] Rene Rodriguez, writing in the Miami Herald, commented that: Unlike most biopics about heroic men who shaped our history or helped bring about change (such as 2013's Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom or The Butler), Selma doesn't feel like freeze-dried hagiography.

[75]Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote: "DuVernay's look at Martin Luther King's 1965 voting-rights march against racial injustice stings with relevance to the here and now.

"[77] Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post gave the film four out of five stars, and wrote: "With Selma, director Ava DuVernay has created a stirring, often thrilling, uncannily timely drama that works on several levels at once ... she presents [Martin Luther King Jr.] as a dynamic figure of human-scale contradictions, flaws and supremely shrewd political skills.

[83][84] Having served as Johnson's top domestic policy assistant (including on issues of civil rights) and as U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Califano questioned whether the writer and director felt "free to fill the screen with falsehoods, immune from any responsibility to the dead, just because they thought it made for a better story".

[85] Historian David E. Kaiser said that the film's depiction of Johnson as obstructing Dr. King's civil rights efforts—when, in fact, he helped get important legislation passed—advances a false narrative that American whites are "hopelessly infected by racism and that black people could and should depend only on themselves".

[86] Andrew Young—SCLC activist and official, and later U.S. congressman, ambassador to the United Nations, and mayor of Atlanta—told The Washington Post that the depiction of the relationship between Johnson and King "was the only thing I would question in the movie.

[87] On television, Young pointed out that it was US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy who had signed the order that allowed the FBI to monitor King and other SCLC members and that it happened before Johnson took office.

"[94] In a scene-by-scene analysis, the visual blog Information is Beautiful gave Selma a score of 100%, noting: "This movie painstakingly recreates events as they happened".