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BECOMING BLACK

By Ines JOHNSON-SPAIN

RUSHLAKE MEDIA GMBH - as SALES / DISTR

Documentary - Completed 2019

BECOMING BLACK tells the true story of a dark-skinned child living in East-Germany that has been told by its white parents that her skin color is a mere coincidence and that it’s of no importance. Until one day as a teenager, the daughter accidentally finds out the truth. Imagine that your parents a

Festivals
& Awards

IDFA 2019

Official Selection

- Year of production
- 2019
- Genres
- Documentary, True Story, Biography
- Countries
- GERMANY
- Languages
- GERMAN, FRENCH
- Duration
- 91 mn
- Director(s)
- Ines JOHNSON-SPAIN
- Writer(s)
- Ines JOHNSON-SPAIN
- Producer(s)
- Anahita NAZEMI (Kobalt Documentaries)
- Synopsis
- Imagine that your parents are white but your skin colour is dark and they tell you that ‘s pure coincidence. This is what happened to a girl in East Berlin in the 1960s.
  Years before, a group of African men came to study in a village nearby. Here the East German woman Sigrid falls in love with Lucien from Togo and gets pregnant. But she is already married to Armin.
  The child is filmmaker Ines Johnson-Spain. Meeting her stepfather Armin and others from her childhood years, she tracks the astonishing strategies of denial her parents and the surroundings had developed. In an intimate portrayal but also critical exploration she brings together painful and confusing childhood memories with matter-of-fact accounts that testify a culture of rejection and tight-lipped denial. Yet, the movingly warm encounters with her Togolese family develop Becoming Black also into a reflection on themes such as identity, social norms and family ties, seen from a very personal perspective.

BECOMING BLACK

Festivals& Awards

Festivals
& Awards