A woman with styled black hair and makeup, wearing a teal dress with black accents, looking directly at the camera in an indoor setting.

Becoming Black

LightReel Film Fest 2024
Germany | 2019 | 90 min

Photo of a wall with artwork and text. The artwork features an eye illustration with numbers and lines, the word 'ANGELIKA' at the top, and a sign that reads 'POP' with smaller text underneath. To the right, details about an event including date, time, and location are displayed.
TICKETS & PASSES

Becoming Black

DIRECTOR
Ines Johnson-Spain

SCREENWRITER
Ines Johnson-Spain

PRODUCER(S)
Anahita Nazemi

EDITOR
Yana Höhnerbach

A woman in a black dress standing inside a modest room with light green walls, adorned with numerous framed photographs and artwork. In the background, there is a man and a woman seated on a bench, and a person standing near a bed.

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.

A black-and-white photo of a group of children and two women outdoors, sitting on the grass in front of a backdrop of trees. The children are gathered around a small rocket or similar object.
A young woman leaning forward and smiling at an elderly woman sitting in a wheelchair in a room with yellow walls and various household items.
A serious woman with dark hair, wearing a pink top, standing with her arms crossed against a gray background.

Ines Johnson-Spain

Director, Becoming Black

Ines Johnson-Spain, born and raised in the GDR (*1962), studied religious studies at the Free University of Berlin and liberal arts and film history as a guest at the Berlin University of the Arts. She works as a director and screenwriter. She is particularly interested in self-concepts in the field of tension between the individual and society. In the current film BECOMING BLACK she autobiographically dealt with her German/Togolese origin.

Return to FILMS

The LightReel Film Festival is the ultimate celebration of film, food, and music in the Union Market District in Northeast Washington, DC. LightReel features independent films, documentaries, web series, studio sneak preview screenings, and special events.

Learn more