Award-winning British director, screenwriter, actress Ghanaian-British, Amma Asante, 47,  has been honoured by Queen Elizabeth II and appointed Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) this year for her general contribution to film.

The “A United Kingdom” director (which stars David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike) began her screen career as a child actress on the British school drama Grange Hill and on TV series Desmond’s (Channel 4) and Birds of a Feather (BBC1) even becoming Children’s Channel presenter for a year. Speaking on the true story movie, ‘A United Kingdom’ which told the story of the Prince of Botswana falling in love with a Brtish girl, Asante said – “I was. I’m also the child of African parents who were raised in a colony that they saw become independent. I thought I was raised knowing many of the stories of independence when it came to Africa. And this story prominently featured life in Britain as well. And yet I didn’t know any of it.” The United Kingdom was so enthralling, it opened the 60th BFI London Film Festival making her the first black director to do so.

She’s acquired an impressive number of accolades over the years including London Film Festival Alfred Dunhill UK Film Talent Award, The Times’s Breakthrough Artist of the Year, the Carl Foreman Award for Special Achievement by a British Writer, Director, or Producer in Their First Feature Film, Miami International Film Festival awarded A Way of Life as Best Dramatic Feature in World Cinema and the International Federation of Film Critics prize FIPRESCI prize for Best Feature Film.

Amma Asante who is a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award winner directed the 2013 movie, Belle. Asante believes funding and financing are the biggest challenges facing filmmakers today. “…it probably sounds ridiculous having just made three movies in four years. But it was 10 years between my first and second movies, so I was trying to make up for lost time. When you look at the figures for women directors, you realise men are able to make so many more films over that period of time because of opportunity. There were so many times between my first two films that I thought about doing something else. I wanted to open a bakery, but I can’t bake. I thought about opening a dry cleaners, but I don’t like the smell. So I stuck with filmmaking,” she told Variety.

The Times has described Asante as one of the most exciting prospects in British cinema to emerge but Asante wants more women directors on board in the industry. “I’m desperate to go to the cinema and have an offering that gives me a choice on screen and isn’t just different versions of a similar perspective. “I knew that there were female [directors] out there but nobody that was in my world… and so it just simply didn’t dawn on me to be a female directing… It seemed very male,” she told Financial Times.

Rachel Ogbu

UK Based Strategic, multidisciplinary Writer with an eye for innovation and pixel perfection. MA in New Media and Internet Technologies. “Although my skill set is vast, my greatest expertise revolve in the worlds of social media, content creation and print collateral. My wish is to combine my knowledge and experience in these areas, to deliver the best creative to my employer’s clients and their audiences.”