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BERLINALE 2004 Competition

Love and Apartheid

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- The horrors, forgiveness and reconciliation of South Africa, post Apartheid. Country of My Skull by John Boorman, with Juliette Binoche & Samuel L. Jackson is shown in competition

The only European film being shown in competition in Berlin today is the French-British-South African co-production, Country of my skull [+see also:
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by the British director John Boorman. This time, the director of Deliverance, High Hopes and Excalibur, has chosen to focus on South Africa in this screen adaptation of the book of the same name by the poet and writer, Antjie Krog. It’s a striking and moving portrait of the country’s attempts to find truth and reconciliation after the toppling of the Apartheid regime.

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Set to a backdrop of the trials and the graphic accounts of the horrors committed by the police and other high up officials, Boorman shows us a difficult love story between an American journalist, played by Samuel L. Jackson, and an African radio reporter, Juliette Binoche.

Boorman seems uncertain whether to take a documentary approach or go for the romantic love story, and so concentrates on the truly representing the facts and the victims stories. "We all know what the Reconciliation Commission has meant to the South African people during this period of transition", says the director, "and this is the reason I tried to present it in as truthful and serious a ways as possible".

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(Translated from Italian)

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