Becoming Black

A film by Ines Johnson-Spain.

»In a country where any deviation from its norm was considered an existential threat, the birth of a black child must have been a political issue.«Ines Johnson-Spain

It’s the start of the 1960s in the GDR: Sigrid, from Leipzig, falls in love with Lucien, a student from Togo, and gets pregnant. But she’s married to Armin, and they already have a son together. The couple let their dark-skinned daughter believe that her skin colour is a coincidence and not significant, until she discovers the truth by chance as a teenager. Decades later, long after she has met her biological father’s family in Togo, she reconstructs her family history in a film as both protagonist and author. In emotional and open conversations with her stepfather Armin, the atmosphere of silence and suppression is very much in evidence. It slowly becomes clear how the social milieu has to be structured in order to make such a major denial of facts possible.Here too, private matters are political. In an intimate exploration of her own identity, Ines Johnson-Spain traces the taboo topic overshadowing her childhood and in doing so also exposes an underlying racism residing in the GDR. In the context of the touching encounter with her Togolese family whom she discovered so late in her life, the film becomes a reflection on identity, family concepts and social norms. From the 1960s in East Berlin to the present day, this intimate, moving self-portrait reveals a wise and hitherto unwritten German story.