Amandla Stenberg Talks Identifying with 'The Hate U Give,' and the "Contemporary Black American" Experience | TIFF 2018 - video Dailymotion

"It's rare that you get such a real, authentic and fresh portrayal of blackness, of a young black woman," Stenberg told THR.

Transcript

00:00This is such a, continues to be such a timely story, and as you said,

00:05A Man Led is about this young girl finding her voice, so I'm curious if you,

00:09because I know you are really active yourself with activism, have any advice

00:13for other young people who may be trying to find their own voice right now in the

00:17current climate we're living in? I think I'm gonna steal something from the movie

00:22and just say don't ever let nobody make you be quiet, because I think we're

00:27living in a time where it's easy to silence yourself before other people

00:32even begin to silence you, and it's easy to doubt your own voice. Yeah, don't be

00:37afraid of your own voice. It's okay to make mistakes, but don't let that hinder

00:43how loud you speak.

00:49The movie is about a 16 year old girl named Star Carter. She lives in Garden

00:55Heights and, but she goes to a white private school that's near the Williamson

01:02neighborhood, which is Williamson private school that she attends. All this gets

01:06challenged when she witnessed the shooting of her best childhood friend

01:09Khalil, and we see a young girl star over the period of the film grow and shows her

01:16independence, and her journey is about standing up and for what you believe in.

01:19It's rare that you get such a real authentic and fresh portrayal of blackness, of

01:26a young black woman, of what it feels like to navigate different worlds, and as a

01:31contemporary black American having to code switch in order to survive in the

01:36different environments that you occupy. And I felt really personally connected to

01:39the storyline because a lot of the details of the story are really similar to my

01:45life, down to some very eerie details. And we later learned that Angie actually was

01:51thinking about me when she wrote it, which was so wild.

01:55I, you know, I'm from the theater, so I really had an opportunity to take both the

02:00script and the book and sort of put them together and approach it as if, you know,

02:05I were doing the play. I was fortunate enough to convince my wife to leave me for a

02:10month and take our kids, you know, away so I could sort of dive into the into the

02:14material like that. And, you know, just also, you know, working with George and

02:20and Regina, realizing that these are people that we know, you know, these, these

02:27characters are authentically black, they're authentically themselves. And so

02:32really having an opportunity to draw from your family, you know, draw from people

02:37that you know, and bring them to life.

02:39It's not very often that you could really find a film that really shows a

02:4416-year-old African-American as your lead protagonist. But also she has a strong

02:49family unit, which I was very much attracted to. And it's two parents who

02:56have had struggles in the past, but they're trying to overcome these obstacles and

03:00pretty much try to break the cycle of what happened in the past. And I just thought

03:05that was a very interesting story. It felt very fresh, but also it felt very timely

03:09what's going on in our environment today. So I just felt like this is something that I

03:13had to tell as a filmmaker.