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CultureCinema

Amma Asante: “Where Hands Touch came to life when I came across the photo of a mixed-race girl in Nazi-era Germany”

Amma Asante: “Where Hands Touch came to life when I came across the photo of a mixed-race girl in Nazi-era Germany”
21 May 2019
Sarah Bradbury
Avatar
Shot by Filippo L'Astorina
Avatar
Sarah Bradbury Shot by Filippo L'Astorina
21 May 2019

British filmmaker Amma Asante first had the idea for her period drama Where Hands Touch when she came across an archived photo of a mixed-race young girl in Nazi-era Germany.

After much research about a little-reported aspect of World World II and having made two critically-acclaimed films, Belle (2013) and A United Kingdom (2016), her movie based around the existence of the Rheinlandbastarde finally came to fruition.

In the beautifully constructed feature, rising star Amandla Stenberg plays a teenage biracial woman named Leyna, the daughter of Kerstin (Abbie Cornish) and a French-Senegalese soldier, who falls in love with a young Nazi officer Lutz (George MacKay) in 1944. She falls pregnant but they are separated as war breaks out and Leyna is eventually sent to a concentration camp where Lutz has been posted.

We had the chance to sit down with Asante to discuss the inspiration for her film, its long gestation period before finally becoming a reality and what she thinks the impact of the taboo-testing movie, which tackles an unknown corner of history, will be.

Sarah Bradbury
Video/photo: Filippo L’Astorina 

Where Hands Touch is released in select cinemas on 10th May 2019. Read our review here.

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