LOS ANGELES - One of the films getting Oscar buzz is Passing, the story of a light-skinned black woman who is "passing", or pretending to be white, in 1920s New York.

Starring Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson, it was written and directed by English actress Rebecca Hall, whose late maternal grandfather, Norman Isaac Ewing, routinely hid his African-American heritage and "passed" as white, as did Hall's mother.