Page 51 - Powerlist 2019 - Digital Edition

Amma Asante a garden party at her home for Amma and the cast. The Media, Publishing & Entertainment

Writer, Director movie was a critical success and earned Amma multiple
award nominations.
Her subsequent movie, A United Kingdom, opened the
BAFTA award winner Amma has established herself as BFI London Film Festival in 2017 and earned rave reviews.
one of Britain’s leading writers and directors and in 2017, It tells the true story of Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo),
Vanity Fair magazine named her as one of the top 10 the King of Botswana, who falls in love with London office
Female Directors to Watch. worker Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike). Amma became
Her first film, 2004’s A Way of Life, about a single mother the first black woman to have a film open the prestigious
fighting extreme poverty, won her a BAFTA and also festival, and in the same year she was made a member of
earned her best newcomer nominations from the London the US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Film Critics Circle and Evening Standard Film Awards. In September 2018, the one-time Grange Hill actress
She went on to win 17 international awards for writing and celebrated the release of her latest film, Where Hands
directing. Touch, which is set in Germany during World War II. It is
In 2014, her second film Belle, which starred Gugu described as a coming-of-age story, with 15-year-old Lenya,
Mbatha-Raw and Emily Watson and which she was the daughter of a white German mother and a black father,
contracted and commissioned to write and direct, became living in fear due to the colour of her skin. She meets and
one of the highest-grossing independent films of the year. falls in love with Lutz, the son of a prominent SS officer,
Belle was championed by Oprah Winfrey who threw putting both their lives at risk.

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