Cry, the Beloved Country(1995)
dir. Darrell James Roodt
Two fathers, one tragedy, and an unlikely bond.
Where to watch: Rent/buy: Apple TV, AmazonLetterboxd ↗
A Black rural Anglican priest travels to Johannesburg to find his estranged son, who has been swept up in a crime that will connect the priest to a wealthy white landowner grieving his own son. Adapted from Alan Paton's 1948 novel.
Why it’s here
Punk in imagining reconciliation across the apartheid color line decades before that reconciliation was politically fashionable — the novel predates Mandela's release by nearly fifty years. Pedagogical in showing how personal grief can crack open even entrenched racial hierarchy.
Where This Film Lives
- Setting
- South Africa
- Topics
- apartheid
Read Alongside
Books that share a topic, theme, or setting with this film.
Born a Crime
Trevor Noah
Mixed-race under apartheid. Illegal. Somehow funny.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Burger's Daughter
Nadine Gordimer
What does a daughter owe a father's cause?
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Country of My Skull
Antjie Krog
Truth and Reconciliation, from inside the room.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Cry, the Beloved Country
Alan Paton
Two fathers. One act of violence. No winners.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
I Write What I Like
Steve Biko
Black Consciousness defined by the man who died for it.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
July's People
Nadine Gordimer
A white family flees revolution and finds themselves.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Kaffir Boy
Mark Mathabane
Growing up Black under apartheid, from the inside.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Long Walk to Freedom
Nelson Mandela
Twenty-seven years inside. Then: reconciliation.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST