MacKay plays the conflicted character without leaning too far toward sympathy or villainy. Where Leyna’s place in society has always been fraught, Lutz’s has been too comfortable. In a pivotal episode, Lutz borrows a Billie Holiday record from his father’s secret collection, and for a few moments, behind the curtains of Lutz’s house - in a very discreet sex scene - they block out a world whose dangers, they realize all too well, are encroaching on them. They hesitantly wander into a sweetly depicted first love. When Lutz accidentally runs into Leyna with his bicycle, he is wearing his Hitler Youth uniform, but is profusely apologetic and obviously drawn to her. Yet by immersing us in Leyna’s daily life, Asante avoids making that murder a leaden foreshadowing of even worse to come. The scene is shocking in its quick brutality. Before long Leyna watches from a short distance as Nazi soldiers shoot someone she knows, on an active street in daylight. There Asante creates an ominous city atmosphere, as red banners with swastikas flutter down from grim brown buildings and Leyna witnesses Jews wearing yellow stars being marched through the streets. The family moves from the Rhineland to Berlin, futilely hoping that Leyna will be safer. Leyna insistently considers herself German, but we first see her in 1944, hiding under the floorboards of her own house as Nazis search for her so she can be sterilized (Hitler’s way of preventing black people from adding to the population). Kerstin also has a young son, whose white father is, oddly, barely mentioned in the film. Without overplaying, her face subtly and constantly conveys the burden and confusion Leyna feels as the daughter of a white German single mother, Kerstin (Abbie Cornish), and a black soldier who was part of the French force occupying Germany after World War I. Stenberg moves easily from her juvenile roles in The Hunger Games and Everything, Everything. Her screenplay is inspired by historical research about black and biracial Germans, although the characters are fictional.
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