![]() But when a Nazi officer orders the sterilization of Leyna and confiscates her legal papers during a bracing inspection visit in 1944, Kerstin decides to move her family to Berlin, where they could keep their heads low and live in safety, at least temporarily. The film centers on Leyna (a remarkable Amandla Stenberg, courageous and fragile in equal measure), a biracial young girl who quietly lives with her protective and idealist mother Kerstin ( Abbie Cornish, surprisingly forgettable) and her young brother in the countryside. With “Where Hands Touch,” Asante unintentionally yet awkwardly juxtaposes a tragic sidebar of World War II and its central crimes against humanity to the genocide of the Jewish population in the Holocaust, with regrettable consequences. ![]() If only her film wasn’t miscalculated with muddled priorities. She shines a light on mixed-race German kids-born to German mothers and French-African soldiers stationed there after the first World War-who were degradingly labeled as ‘Rhineland Bastards’ and feared for their lives under Hitler’s National Socialist regime. Based on the themes of her filmography, it is no surprise that Asante takes on a little talked about dimension of another slice of history depicted in countless films. In the more recent, gentle historical drama “ A United Kingdom” (adapted by Guy Hibbert from Susan Williams’ book), she put forth a thoughtful chronicle of the controversial interracial marriage of a white British woman and the Botswana King, Seretse Khama as they overcame the expected and unforeseen social hurdles standing in the way of their union. Inspired by a true story in a script by Misan Sagay, her “ Belle” perceptively portrayed a young biracial woman born into white aristocracy in 18 th-Century England, cleverly turning the traditional costume drama up on its head. Which is too bad, because actor-turned-director Asante has an immensely sensitive touch in bringing multifaceted period yarns of intersectional identities to life.
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