Since it swept the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prizes and sold in a stunning $17.5 million worldwide rights deal to Fox Searchlight at January’s Sundance Film Festival, Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation has been considered a front-runner film in the Oscar race. A brewing controversy threatens to challenge the trajectory of that inspiring narrative. Memories of 17-year-old rape charges waged against both Parker and Jean McGianni Celestin (who shares co-story credit with Parker) while they were roommates at Penn State in 1999 left Fox Searchlight in full crisis mode these past weeks, scrambling to figure out how...