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.
Ines Johnson-Spain
Director
Ines Johnson- Spain
Writer
Anahita Nazemi
Producer
Kobalt Documentary
Project Type:
Documentary
Runtime:
1 hour 31 minutes
Country of Origin:
Germany
Language:
French, German
Shooting Format:
Digital
Film Color:
Color
First-time Filmmaker:
No
Student Project:
No
A propos du projet
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.