Michelle Obama Retraces Her Roots in ‘Becoming’ Documentary Trailer

Netflix has shared the first full trailer for Becoming, an original documentary centered on former First Lady Michelle Obama and her life before and after the presidency of her husband, Barack Obama. The film will launch on the platform on May 6th.

Set to Alicia Keys’ “Girl on Fire,” the trailer shows footage from Michelle Obama’s 2019 tour in 34 cities across the country, speaking to huge arena crowds as well as to smaller, intimate community circles. Obama also walks viewers through her working-class upbringing on the South Side of Chicago and how it shaped her into the person she is today.

“It was a typical working-class community: some good music, some good barbecue, some good times,” she says, as archival photographs of her as a child growing up in the neighborhood appear onscreen. Later, she tells a community group: “So little of who I am happened in those eight years. So much more of who I was happened before.”

Becoming also highlights Obama’s particular struggle and oppositions as a black woman; in one scene, she tells a crowd about a high school guidance counselor who told her she was “reaching too high.”