Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president is a man who is famous for all the right reasons but the guard who worked while Mandela survived 27 years of wrongful aparthid imprisonment has his own biopic now. The good folks over at yahoo.com give us more on the story:
Oscar-winning director Bille August has brought the memoirs of one of Nelson Mandela’s jailers to the screen, with Dennis Haysbert playing the famous prisoner a part that he said regularly left him in tears.
“Goodbye Bafana,” which stars Joseph Fiennes as prison guard James Gregory, premiered Sunday at the Berlin film festival, where it is competing for the top Golden Bear award. Gregory, who said he built up a friendship with Mandela over 17 years, worked at Robben Island prison in the office that handled prisoners’ mail and sat in on visits. He was accomplished in Mandela’s Xhosa language.
This is the plot summary:GOODBYE BAFANA is the true story of a white South African racist whose life was profoundly altered by the black prisoner he guarded for twenty years. The prisoner’s name was Nelson Mandela. This movie sounds very well done. Also it is interesting seeing the life of someone who came in contact with a person of this caliber every day, in prison no less. The director sounds good for the project as well, Billie August did one of my favorite films with Winona Rider; The House of Spirits, if he still has the talent that he did back then, well this movie is in good hands.
Goodbye Bafana is getting very good reactions wherever it is shown, this may be a film that is competing at the Oscars next year this time. I hope that it is widely released, especially in the places where people have forgotten what real struggle is. There is always a need to see a film that shows hard work paying off and one person changing their world for the better.
Call me a flake but I’m a real sucker for a movie that shows a guy with a bad view on life being enlightened by the right person.
