‘Amma Asante is a Phenomenal Storyteller...’

Where Hands Touch 

Remarkable. Insightful. Emotional

3 words that I choose to describe this amazing movie. Where Hands Touch is a historical Drama/Romance, that tells the life of an Afro European, biracial girl called Leyna (Amandla Stenberg). Who is daughter to a French, Senegalese father and German mother, Kerstin (Abbie Cornish). Like other black Germans in the period of Nazi Germany, even though they did not receive the same treatment as Jews, they were subject to a lot of oppression. The way to survive was to be sterilised and to have papers which Leyna had neither. Trying to stay lowkey, her family move to Berlin where she meets Lutz (George Mackay), who is a son of a Nazi Official( Christopher Eccleston) and they end up falling in love (I know right, yikes).

Being set in the time of WW2, It forces us to see life from different perspectives, as do Amma Asante’s other movies. Honestly I don’t cry but I definitely teared up one too many times in that screening! Generalising, many of us are not aware of the experiences, that took place with biracial Germans, and the German parents who had biracial children. We tend to not pay attention to the black people in those times as it’s never shed light on, however the film educates and gives an insight into the inequalities and the struggles they face. Kerstin would be physically and verbally abused, they called her things like the ‘black mans whore’ and would slap her for sticking up for her daughter. She and Leyna were seen as impure due to her laying with a black man and due to the obvious reasons of Leyna being black. Kerstin’s own sister went as far as telling her that Leyna needed to use the back door when she is coming, in order for no one to see them associating with blacks.

People would constantly try to strip away Leyna’s identity and deny her of her German blood, she speaks a lot on the fact that she is a German girl who loves Germany but is not allowed to. We feel the nervousness and anxiousness Leyna feels as she comes in contact with officers throughout the movie. Which puts us as the audience on edge as we never know what is about to take place. In spite of the fact none of the cast identify with being German and myself not being able to, every actor on screen took us to a place of relation, they handled their roles very delicately and executed it flawlessly.

Having biracial, half German, half Ghanaian family, this is a movie I urged them to see. Coming from London, from what I’ve seen, I believed that biracial people didn’t experience the racism which people who are fully black experience. Due to colorism and society seeing ‘ lighter as better’. Yet, even though this is a whole new era to Nazi Germany, having talks with my family that are born & raised there they explained to me that being mixed doesn’t extinct them from racism. In fact she receives double racism from both white and black communities as the blacks refer to them as white and not ‘truly black’ and the whites refer to them as black. Which put a lot of things in perspective for me which watching the movie emphasised.

Asante also added subtle but an impactful spotlight on the racism taking place in America around the same time. Black people were getting lynched, and you come to understand that you had a much better chance of surviving as a person of colour, in Nazi Germany than you did in America. Amma Asante is a phenomenal storyteller, stepping out of her own shoes and taking a huge risk with this movie and yet dominating. This movie surely educates us and shuts down the ignorant. As a black female in the same industry, you truly are inspired to push certain narratives on to the world & break boundaries after watching it. She surely broke a few boundaries doing this movie as a black woman and I would say it was a risk worth while that I hope she continues to take. There were times some events were predictable for me but it still worked well and it didn’t hinder the impact of the movie.

Where Hands Touch is a beautiful film. Every second of this movie you were gripped, your attention was never turned away, there was times where you laughed and times where you cried. This is honestly an incredible film that I would no doubt watch time and time again.

Rating - 10/10.