INTERVIEW
AMMA ASANTE
Amma Asante has emerged as one of the UK’s most exciting
filmmaking talents, with films such as AWay of Life and Belle. She
took a break from finishing her upcoming feature, A United Kingdom,
to tell
Nikki Baughan
about the importance of taking a fresh approach.
A Different
PERSPECTIVE
W
hile writer-director Amma Asante’s
2004 debut film
A Way of Life
may
have brought her to immediate
attention as a filmmaker, winning her a stream
of international plaudits including a BAFTA for
Most Promising Newcomer, she had already
been working in the UK film and television
industry for more than two decades.As a young
actor she appeared in TV shows
Grange Hill
and
Birds of a Feather
, before moving off-screen to
concentrate on writing BBC2 drama
Brothers
and Sisters
and her blistering first feature (the
latter was developed and financed through the
then UK Film Council).
Having gone on to direct celebrated histori-
cal drama
Belle
(2013), and now in post-pro-
duction on
A United Kingdom
— when she
speaks to
UK In Focus
, Asante is about to head
to Prague to record the film’s score with com-
poser Patrick Doyle, before returning to the UK
for the mix and grade — she credits her early
on-screen life with providing a solid founda-
tion on which to build a filmmaking career.
“When I was a child actor, directors were
authority figures,” she recalls. “I learnt a lot
from them but also that there were some
things I like to do differently. I learnt the kind
of atmosphere I like to bring to set, and what’s
important to me in terms of how I work with
my crew as well as my actors. Also, as a child,
I learnt the language of cinema, the language
of filmmaking, and it was wonderful to be sub-
merged in that at a very young age. It comes
very naturally now.”
Indeed, Asante’s work reveals a filmmaker of
innate talent, with a gift for telling universally
resonant stories in intimate detail. “I always
want to tell the micro story within the macro
story,” she says.“The story of the individual.”
Just as
A Way of Life
examines the brutal
truth of social disharmony in modern Britain
through the eyes of an isolated teen mother in
small-town Wales, so
Belle
is a powerful study
of global race relations — and, particularly, the
abhorrence of slavery on a global scale — as
told through the experience of Dido Elizabeth
Belle (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a mixed-
race woman living among the closed-minded
aristocracy in 18th-century England.
Similarly, Asante’s next project
A United
Kingdom
is the story of Seretse Khama (David
Oyelowo), a young king in Botswana — then a
UK colony called Bechuanaland — who, in
1947, met and married white English woman
Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike) while studying
law at Oxford.The fallout from their interracial
relationship was felt both in Africa and the
British Empire, with Khama exiled to the UK
and forced to give up his royal birthright
before eventually negotiating independence
for Bechuanaland and becoming its first dem-
ocratically elected president (the couple’s son
is currently serving as its fourth).
“It’s aspirational and inspirational,” says
Asante of what drew her to the story, which
she had not come across until Oyelowo called
to discuss the possibility of her directing.
“Essentially, it’s about a beautiful love that
was able to overcome so many obstacles and
achieve so much. It’s also a British story as
well as an African story, which is why it
appeals to me so strongly.”
Universal stories
While she was born and raised in London,
Asante’s parents are originally from Ghana and
she credits this rich personal heritage with
both her interest in, and ability to get to the
heart of, such culturally diverse stories. “I’m
attracted to those bigger-picture stories that
reflect on the state we’re in today,” she says.
“Universal stories that have very specific
details that speak to me as somebody who is
bi-cultural. There was so much of myself in
Belle
, and the same with
A Way of Life
, even
though the lead character Leigh-Anne is white
and in many ways different to what people
might expect me to be. She was an outsider, a
person who felt she didn’t belong in similar
ways to how Dido Belle felt.
“
AUDIENCES ARE CURIOUS
ABOUT OUR HISTORYAND
THESE GREAT STORIES THAT
HAVE NEVER BEEN TOLD
”
Amma Asante, filmmaker
A United Kingdom
14
