Although her role in this summer’s “The Darkest Minds” did little to inspire, Amandla Stenberg seems to be headed to a star-making fall season, as two of her films will make their debuts at the Toronto International Film Festival. Her performance as Starr in the YA-book adaption “The Hate U Give” is already building buzz, and it looks as though she will shoulder that film’s all-too-relevant themes of today quite powerfully.
While Stenberg juggles urgent contemporary issues in that film, she will also be transporting audiences back to 1944 Nazi Germany with director Amma Asante (“A United Kingdom” and “Belle”) for “Where Hands Touch” in what will surely be a modern parallel to the building strife of today.
The trailer opens with the image of planes flying menacingly over Germany as Nazi soldiers raid Lenya’s (Amandla Stenberg) home. “You won’t find her,” her white German mother (Abbie Cornish) defiantly tells one of the soldiers as Lenya hides underneath the floorboards. When her family moves to Berlin, Lenya learns the harsh reality of Adolf Hitler’s influence and the prejudice instilled in the Hitler Youth. Her encounter with a young soldier for the Nazi party (George MacKay) with his own conflicts catalyzes an unlikely connection born among an increasingly fractured society.
“Where Hands Touch” will premiere on September 9 at TIFF and will be released in select theaters via Vertical Entertainment and DirecTV on September 14.
Here is the official synopsis:
WHERE HANDS TOUCH is a coming of age story set in the most brutal of times: Germany, 1944. Leyna (Amandla Stenberg), the 15-year old daughter of a white German mother (Abbie Cornish) and a black African father, meets Lutz (George MacKay), a compassionate member of the Hitler Youth whose father (Christopher Eccleston) is a prominent Nazi soldier, and they form an unlikely connection in this quickly changing world.
As Leyna’s mother strives to protect her from the horrors that she could face as a mixed-race German citizen, Leyna is forced to forge her own path as the war goes on and the Nazi’s increase their atrocities over the Jews and all dissidents. Can she find an ally in Lutz, himself battling a fate laid out before him that he is hesitant to embrace?