Mo Asumang – documentary film maker, actress and TV moderator

Hat tip: Euromight

About Mo (taken from her website):

Mo is an acclaimed filmmaker, actress and moderator, well known in Germany due to her brave documentary movies and TV moderation. Recently she has gained International exposure being featured in Roman Polanski’s movie “The Ghostwriter” playing Condoleezza Rice, she was featured in an article by “USA Today” which linked President Obama and Mo Asumang as ‘kindred souls’, and being compared in the media to filmmaker Michael Moore, and through her work leading workshops and lectures about racism and social integration in Universities and Schools across USA and Europe.

Since the beginning of her career as a TV moderator in Germany in 1996, she has became a well known cultural figure and has taken on a successful career as both producer, writer, actress, and film director as well as moderator. In recent years Mo has dedicated her many talents and her energy to creative activism in the field of racism.

In her new documentary “Road to Rainbow” (directed by Mo Asumang, 2010), Mo is searching for the dream the South Africans had about equality that was to rise after the Apartheid Era, investigating the social reality of South Africa 16 years later.

In her previous movie “Roots Germania” (directed and produced by Mo Asumang, 2007) Mo was able to solve a trauma caused by racism; She undertakes a journey to discover her roots and her identity, facing her African father in Ghana, her White German Mother in German, and Jürgen Rieger, the head of the neonaziparty NPD. The catalyst of this journey, a threat over her life received by the NeoNazi Band “White Aryan Rebels”, becomes a poignant tool for self discovery and a sharp reflection to matters of racism in Germans society of today.

“Roots Germania” was nominated for Germany’s most popular TV Prize,the “Grimme Award” and within one year shown 15 times on TV, receiving 60 articles in it’s first week of run, and shown in several film festivals in Germany and Africa.

Mo’s seeking for social justice is not by chance. At the age of 5 weeks Mo was sent to an orphanage, and then raised by foster parents and her white grandmother. From this early period and on, the color of her skin has impacted her and has made the issue of racism deeply entrenched into her live. In 2007 Mo Asumang has been selected as one of the leading figures and activists in Germany for issues of social integration and Intercultural affairs.

View a clip from Mo’s latest documentary Road to Rainbow