Lionel Newton Movies
- 2004
A South African police officer still haunted by the role he played in the brutal torture and murder of a young freedom fighter travels to the dying fishing town from which the boy came to beg the forgiveness of his grieving mother and father in first-time director Ian Gabriel's unflinching look at the crumbling emotional dams that came with the end of apartheid. Upon arriving in the crumbling town of Paternoster, ex-policeman Tertius Coetzee (Mummy star Arnold Vosloo) unleashes a suffocating torrent of despair and suppressed rage in the emotionally fragile Grootboom family. Though he has come to seek forgiveness for failing to prevent the grim demise of Daniel Grootboom, the crime Tertius has committed in allowing the murder to happen has already muted the emotions of his young victim's damaged family. Hendrik Grootboom (Zane Meas) is a stoic fisherman who holds out hope that the town will one day become prosperous again as son Ernest (Christo Davids) retreats into mathematics. Meanwhile, mother Magda (Denise Newman) and daughter Sannie (Quanita Adams) simply long for the days when things were less complicated. As the shockwaves of anger ripple through the Grootbooms' hearts and home, the enraged Sannie determines to settle the score with her brother's killer by ensuring that Tertius remains in Paternoster long enough for Daniel's vengeful friends to arrive in town. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Arnold Vosloo, Zane Meas, (more)
The many emotional scars left by South Africa's history of institutionalized racism come under the microscope in this drama. As South Africa comes to terms with the legacy of apartheid, their government has created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in which the perpetrators of racial violence and injustice must come face to face with their victims if they are to be forgiven for their crimes. Langston Whitfield (Samuel L. Jackson) is an African-American journalist who is assigned to cover these hearings by The Washington Post; Whitfield doubts the efficacy of this process, and sets out to interview Col. De Jager (Brendan Gleeson), a notorious former officer of the South African police who was famous for his violence against blacks in order to put this method to the test. While in South Africa, Whitfield meets Anna Malan (Juliette Binoche), an Afrikaner poet who is covering the hearing for a radio station and is both appalled and disturbed by the details of the violence inflicted against her countrymen. After striking up a friendship, Whitfield and Malan become romantically involved as they try to come to terms with their feelings about what they've learned. Also screened under the title Country of My Skull, In My Country was adapted from a book by South African author Antjie Krog. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Samuel L. Jackson, Juliette Binoche, (more)
- 1997
This comedy, a British/South African co-production, takes place in Johannesburg in the post-apartheid era, and it follows six characters once culturally separated under the old regime, but now struggling to deal with each other under the new and more enlightened government. All working class, each of the six South Africans have their own issues to deal with as the once-divided nation learns to live with freedom and equality. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
