Amma Asante

Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo: ‘I’ve never heard us described as an island of joy before!’

Radio’s odd couple take questions from actors, directors and Observer readers about optimism, the films they disagree on – and biscuits

Miranda Sawyer

01, May, 2022 @6:00 AM

Lenny Henry tells black Britons: get Covid jab to avoid being left behind

Open letter by comic and other black cultural figures encourages wider vaccine take-up

Aamna Mohdin

29, Mar, 2021 @11:01 PM

'Chisholm made Obama possible': director Amma Asante on Mrs America's real star

She put her mark on The Handmaid’s Tale. Now the British director is working on Mrs America, which stars Cate Blanchett as an infamous anti-feminist. But that’s not who’s caught Asante’s eye

Ellen E Jones

07, Jul, 2020 @3:21 PM

Amma Asante: ‘When my parents came to the UK, signs on doors said: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs’

The writer and director, 49, on her schoolmate Naomi Campbell, wearing makeup as armour – and being an awful cook

Funmi Fetto

25, May, 2019 @1:00 PM

Where Hands Touch review – misjudged interracial Nazi-era romance

Amandla Stenberg plays a biracial teenager who falls for a young German officer in Amma Asante’s uncomfortable second world war drama

Peter Bradshaw

10, May, 2019 @7:00 AM

A secret romance: the director who is confronting Nazis, race and bigotry

Amma Asante’s new movie follows the story of a biracial girl during the Third Reich. How much of it reflects the film-maker’s fears of where we are heading now?

Cath Clarke

03, May, 2019 @7:00 AM

Where Hands Touch review – interracial Nazi romance is a well-intentioned bore

Amma Asante follows up A United Kingdom with a potentially fascinating yet ultimately uninvolving story of a biracial German girl falling for a Nazi

Benjamin Lee

10, Sep, 2018 @3:30 AM

'Weinstein was the industry. I was just another actress': shaking up film and TV

The women and men changing their industry

Martha Hayes

27, Jan, 2018 @9:00 AM

The Sweet Makers: A Tudor Treat review – not just a sugary concoction

This was familar but pleasurable fare as modern-day confectioners were given the task of making sweets the 16th-century way. Plus: Amma Asante on The South Bank Show

Chitra Ramaswamy

20, Jul, 2017 @5:00 AM

A United Kingdom review – black king to white queen…

This true-life romance between an English office clerk and the future king of Botswana is a beautifully shot, crowd-pleasing gem

Mark Kermode, Observer film critic

27, Nov, 2016 @9:00 AM

David Oyelowo: 'People of colour have been expunged from British history'

Oyelowo, star of Selma and A United Kingdom, says he is ‘hellbent’ on explaining black history through period movies to help Britain understand itself

Andrew Pulver

06, Oct, 2016 @5:20 PM

Amma Asante on A United Kingdom: 'People were comforted a woman of colour was telling this story'

British director and its star David Oyelowo talked about the importance of making the film in Botswana, multiculturalism and film’s continuing lack of diversity