تدريب Shadowing: Amma Asante on Where Hands Touch, Amandla Stenberg, diverstity in filmmaking, The Billion Dollar Spy - تعلم التحدث بالإنجليزية عبر الفيديو

Emma, fantastic to meet you.

Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.

Thank you.

And congratulations on a really wonderful film.

Thank you.

Maybe you can start by giving us a brief synopsis of the film.

For people who haven't seen it, what's this all about?

So it's the story of an Afro-German girl, so a young girl growing up in Nazi Germany,

who's the daughter of an African soldier who fought in World War I for France, and a white German mother, one that Hitler would call Aryan.

She's played by Amanda Lestemburg, and it's the story of her struggle for survival in Nazi Germany,

but all of the relationships that touch her and that she touches within this kind of really extraordinary existence.

It stars also George Mackay, who is a German boy, who's also in the Hitler Youth, which was mandatory at the time.

And it's the story of the friendship that they create and how they very slowly start to discover what's happening around them,

what's happening to the Jews around them.

And yeah, navigating their way to a moral understanding of the world, really.

And it's an incredibly unique take on this period of history, which has obviously been put on the screen many times before.

Yeah.

What inspired it?

I understand you came across this photo of an Afro-German girl from

that period and it's that kind of set the thought process running completely

and I was just googling as you do sometimes around this

idea of how did other people like me get to Europe how did our families get to Europe

so other people who are of African descent but born

and raised in Europe so essentially were Afro-Europeans

and how did the Afro-French get there the Afro-Dutch you know

and then the Afro-Germans and I kept coming across this term Rhineland bastards if I can say that

and those and it was a derogatory term that was used for these

and biracial children born of these first World War soldiers

and these white German women

and alongside this term this this image of this little girl kept coming up

and she is biracial she's half white and half and black African

and it's in not taken in Nazi Germany in 1943

and she's about 14 she's standing amongst a group of other schoolgirls who are quite obviously Aryan.

And her face is completely unreadable.

You can't, you're not able to project or apply anything onto her, or read anything into her expression.

And she completely intrigued me.

And so I just began digging into who she was.

And I couldn't actually find that much information other than

that the image was owned by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

and that her image was being used as an example in Nazi Germany of what Aryan features do not look like.

So basically the kind of features that Hitler wanted to ensure did not enter into his Aryan so-called fatherland.

And I understand it was actually maybe going to be your second feature

but because there was such an extensive process to kind of research and build the story, I know you did Bell and United Kingdom in between.

So how did that research process go for you

and what were some of the things you discovered and to get to this point where you could make it?

Yeah it was a really long research period.

You know you learn about the period in school

and you learn about the devastating times

but it's one thing learning about them in that way and it's another thing trying to transpose that to screen

and you know create a world

and also do honour to those who were most impacted by that period

so I started off with just your basic you know your basic research finding out what I could get online

that was visiting you know the various museums and Holocaust museums

and archives online

and once I got enough information it was time to bring on board a researcher to work with me

and we began to go deeper into some of those archives

and some of that research until eventually I was able to saw some Afro-German survivors of the period

and sit down with them and interview with them

and really first-hand hear about what it was like to be both black and German

in this extraordinary time when you know this this country was eating its own tail

and then impacting all of the other countries around it.

And talk me through this incredible cast, you managed to put together, not least Amanda Stenberg, right at the centre of it, but also with Abby Cornish and George McKay as you mentioned.

So how did you choose these people and how did you work with them to execute your vision?

Yeah, I mean I feel so lucky and so blessed.

You know

when I first started working on this film Amanda Stenberg would have been about I don't know two or something like that.

So it was clearly meant to take this long so that she could grow up and take the role.

I didn't know Amanda Stenberg.

I didn't know her as an actress.

I just came across her on my social media feed one day when she made this video about cultural appropriation.

And it had like a million likes.

And it was an amazing video that she had kind of created.

And I thought, wow, who is this girl?

She's incredible.

I went onto my Facebook and typed out, you know, if I had a daughter, she'd have to have a brain like this.

Amanda Lestenberg but when I typed it out I had this memory

that I'd seen that name before and it clicked with me

that it was in my inbox somewhere

so I found it in my Twitter inbox she had written to me a couple of years before

and asked if she could interview me for her feminism class

so when I saw that I thought let me google her who is this girl

and then suddenly I realized you know she was really from Hungry Games

and I was like this is precisely the person I'm looking for for for where hands touch

and with George George Mackay came into the picture pretty late

and I had auditioned extensively some great great young actors George was away filming in Spain

and he sent in a self-tape of himself and I looked at

that self-tape one Saturday

and he just literally blew me away I mean all these guys had come back for recalls

and recalls and I saw one tape of George and I called my casting director and said offer it.

He's incredible and that played out all the way through filming.

And Abby Cornish I've been a fan of for a long time.

Excuse me, I think she's just a brilliant, brilliant actress and one who's just quietly working away,

picking really interesting projects and keeping her head down and doing the work.

And at first when I met her, she was just, she looked so young and she's so pretty.

And I was thinking, this is Nazi Germany and there are Russians

and the Germans were hungry and this is one of the worst times in our history

and you know do I dump this pretty woman in the middle of it

but it's not as if people weren't pretty back then too they could be

and also I knew

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that I wanted her to be young I wanted her to not be more than 15 years

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or 16 years older than her daughter so

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when I did the math actually she was quite right

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and she worked hard she lobbied hard for the role

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and every time we talked I realized how much of an understanding she had for also the precarious position

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that these women who had children with black men, existed within and were having to raise them and protect them and not least having a daughter,

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you know, in that environment.

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So she was just, she was outstanding.

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And Christopher Eccleston, I just grew up with his work.

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He's just an amazing actor.

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He has subtlety and sensitivity.

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And I wanted a revelatory performance.

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I wanted to put him in a role that we hadn't ever seen him in before,

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at least I hadn't, and allow him to reveal something else about the kind of characters he can take on.

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And as I'm mentioning, it's a non-conventional story from that period.

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Why do you think it's relevant to tell this story now?

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So even though it is a period piece, what do you think it has to say to a contemporary audience

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and what do you think people will take away from it?

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I mean, I think there are many reasons to be telling stories like this now.

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You can come at it from several different angles.

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I think one of them is, you know, this is essentially a story about a generation of children or two children, let's say, who are coming from a generation that were radicalized.

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They were literally radicalized.

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And, you know, we hear that word today and we don't always think about the ins and outs of what that means.

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So I think it's really relevant today because we're compartmentalised.

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Identities are very, very important to us.

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And that's a great thing, but it can also cause separation.

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I think that one of the things that's fascinating to me about Nazi Germany is how propaganda

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and language was used to alienate people and other certain groups.

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And I think that we exist in those spaces today where we're using language

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that was once unacceptable but has become normalised to alienate people

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and to dehumanise them and to make it easier for us to decide who deserves in society and who doesn't,

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who has a right in society and who doesn't.

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So I feel like there's never been a better time to really explore some of these aspects.

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But I also think from the point of view of this idea that gays matters, And gays matters even when it's inconvenient,

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even when it's telling very, very difficult histories.

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Gays matters.

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The idea that there was a mass massive Afro-German children who were suffering persecution outside of community you know

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if I suffered some kind of racism or prejudice I could come home

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or I could go to a friend or I could talk to an uncle

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or an aunt who was the same as me

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but these children couldn't do that

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and it doesn't make it any worse it just makes it different

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and I believe that that story deserves a voice in many ways

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and how do you see the broader landscape for women both in front

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and behind the camera but also for people of colour do you feel like

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that there are more opportunities now do you still think we've got a way to come

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and why might it be important to have

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that diversity of stories on screen well I feel like we're at the beginning of rounding a corner

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and we none of us know how far around

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that corner we are I do feel

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that hindsight is going to be the best judge of really how far we've come

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but I do feel we've got a lot of work to

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do still it isn't just about getting people of color women women of color behind the the camera

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but it's about all aspects of the industry because what happens

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when you deliver a new um gaze to the screen it's often viewed as wrong

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because you know for

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so long since cinema began um those who've been privileged to

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create cinema have told us what right is what works what cinema is

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and so if you come along as a woman a woman of color

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and you challenge

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that it can often be deemed as just not right you know it's the wrong tone

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but wrong tone for who these are the stories

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that i've been desperate to see and tell and

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so many women are desperate to see versions of themselves

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that haven't yet been created on screen because we've been told what's right

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and what's wrong what's the right tone what's the wrong tone

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so i feel there are a thousand reasons why it's it's important really to be telling stories from these perspectives.

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No. Sorry.

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I'm just going to say that last line again.

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Just.

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If you don't mind, yeah.

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Yeah.

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Some video.

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And that's it.

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Can I call back that?

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I'll just do it.

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Thanks.

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Oh, that's all right.

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So I feel that there are a million reasons really why these stories need to be told from

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these these literally diverse perspectives you know

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and maybe you can just quickly tell us about your next project is it billion dollar spy yeah my

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so my next project is called billion dollar spy and it's set in Cold War

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and Russia in 1977 it's two men um it's it's really

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the story of a rush of an American CIA agent

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and the Russian spy that he's running is really the intimate story of the relationship

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that they formed together against the kind of social and political backdrop that was really quite, what's the word I would use,

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really quite a tough one in 1977 Cold War Russia.

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So I'm really excited we're just halfway through casting at the moment.

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Alright, fantastic.

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Well thank you so much for sharing all that with us.

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Congratulations again on a wonderful film.

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Thank you.

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Thanks so much.

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So much appreciated.

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Thank you.

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التظليل الصوتي (Shadowing) تقنية تعلم لغة مدعومة علمياً، طُورت أصلاً لتدريب المترجمين الفوريين المحترفين. الطريقة بسيطة لكنها قوية: تستمع لصوت إنجليزي أصلي وتكرره فوراً بصوت عالٍ — كظل يتبع المتحدث بتأخير 1-2 ثانية. تُظهر الأبحاث تحسناً كبيراً في دقة النطق والتنغيم والإيقاع وربط الأصوات والاستماع والطلاقة.

تدريب Shadowing: Amma Asante on Where Hands Touch, Amandla Stenberg, diverstity in filmmaking, The Billion Dollar Spy - تعلم التحدث بالإنجليزية عبر الفيديو

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