Amma Asante, the British writer-director behind Belle and A United Kingdom, has joined the directing roster of Snapper Films.
The signing was reported Monday by the trade outlet Shots. Asante said she was drawn to the company's passion for filmmaking and its "real belief in the directors voice," adding that she sees some of today's most distinctive creative opportunities in the connection between cinema and advertising. She credited "Helen and the team" with building a company that feels personal yet creatively ambitious.
A career defined by firsts
Asante's debut feature, A Way of Life (2004), made her the first Black director to win a BAFTA Film Award for writing and directing a feature. The film also won best director at BAFTA Cymru and the FIPRESCI and Grand Jury prizes at the Miami Film Festival.
Belle (2013) became one of that year's top-grossing independent films and landed Asante on Variety's 10 Directors to Watch list. With A United Kingdom (2016), she became the first Black director to open the BFI London Film Festival. She was named an MBE for services to film in 2017.
On television, she directed Emmy-winning episodes of FX's Mrs. America and episodes of Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale. She also wrote and directed the 2018 feature Where Hands Touch. Most recently, she executive produced, wrote and directed all six episodes of Constantin Film's Smilla's Sense of Snow, adapted from Peter Høeg's novel, which has been acquired by AMC+.
Asante is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and has twice been elected to the BAFTA council. Her move into advertising work comes as conversations about Black directors' access to steady, well-funded work continue, a gap Cup of Soul examined in its look at the Oscars' best director history. Representation deals like this one give filmmakers of color another path to keep working between features and series.
