''A World Apart'' is a 1988 anti-
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
drama film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...
and directed by
Chris Menges
Chris Menges BSC, ASC (born 15 September 1940) is a British cinematographer and film director. He is a member of both the American and British Societies of Cinematographers.
Life and career
Menges was born in Kington, Herefordshire, the son ...
and starring
Barbara Hershey
Barbara Lynn Herzstein, better known as Barbara Hershey (born February 5, 1948), is an American actress. In a career spanning more than 50 years, she has played a variety of roles on television and in cinema in several genres, including weste ...
,
David Suchet,
Jeroen Krabbé,
Paul Freeman,
Tim Roth
Timothy Simon Roth (born 14 May 1961) is an English actor and producer. He began acting on films and television series in the 1980s. He was among a group of prominent British actors of the era, the "Brit Pack (actors), Brit Pack".
He made hi ...
, and
Jodhi May
Jodhi Tania May (''née'' Hakim-Edwards; 8 May 1975) is a British actress. She remains the youngest recipient of the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, for ''A World Apart'' (1988). Her other film appearances include ''The Last ...
. Written by
Shawn Slovo
Shawn Slovo (born 1950) is a South African screenwriter, best known for the film '' A World Apart'', based on her childhood under apartheid. She is the daughter of South African Communist Party leaders Joe Slovo and Ruth First. She wrote the scree ...
, it is based on the lives of Slovo's parents,
Ruth First
Heloise Ruth First (4 May 1925 – 17 August 1982) was a South African anti- apartheid activist and scholar. She was assassinated in Mozambique, where she was working in exile, by a parcel bomb built by South African police.
Family and ed ...
and
Joe Slovo
Joe Slovo (born Yossel Mashel Slovo; 23 May 1926 – 6 January 1995) was a South African politician, and an opponent of the apartheid system. A Marxist-Leninist, he was a long-time leader and theorist in the South African Communist Pa ...
. The film was a
co-production between companies from the UK and
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...
, where it was filmed. It features
Hans Zimmer
Hans Florian Zimmer (; born 12 September 1957) is a German film score composer and music producer. He has won two Academy Awards, Oscars and four Grammy Awards, Grammys, and has been nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards, Emmys and a Tony Awar ...
's first non-collaborative
film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to ...
.
The film received acclaim, winning
BAFTA Awards
The British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTA Film Awards is an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to honour the best British and international contributions to film. The cere ...
for Best Screenplay for Shawn Slovo and Best Supporting Actor for
David Suchet,
as well as the
Special Grand Prize of the Jury at the
1988 Cannes Film Festival.
Plot
Set in
Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...
in 1963, the film examines the abrupt ending of 13-year-old Molly's blithe childhood when her father, a member of the
South African Communist Party
The South African Communist Party (SACP) is a communist party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), tactically dissolved itself in 1950 in the face of being declared illegal by the governing Na ...
, flees into exile. Ostracised by her peers, Molly draws closer to her mother who is part of the campaign against
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
. Their relationship is challenged by hardship, political intimidation, and the mother's eventual arrest.
The film title references both the gap between the mother and her teenage girl, who fails to grasp why their family is so fixated with events beyond their comfortable white suburb, and another separating this world from that of South Africa's poverty-stricken black townships.
Essentially, the film is a tribute to
Ruth First
Heloise Ruth First (4 May 1925 – 17 August 1982) was a South African anti- apartheid activist and scholar. She was assassinated in Mozambique, where she was working in exile, by a parcel bomb built by South African police.
Family and ed ...
by her daughter and concludes in a moment of epiphany as Molly comes to terms with her mother's activism and understands that she too must play a part in the struggle against racial injustice.
Cast
Reception
''A World Apart'' has an overall approval rating of 89% on
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
from 9 critics.
The film was placed on 40 critics' top ten lists, making it one of the most acclaimed films of 1988.
Box office
The film made £800,000 at the UK box office.
Awards and nominations
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:World Apart, A
1988 films
1980s coming-of-age drama films
1988 independent films
Apartheid films
Atlantic Entertainment Group films
Best Foreign Film Guldbagge Award winners
British coming-of-age drama films
British political drama films
British independent films
Drama films based on actual events
Films scored by Hans Zimmer
Films about families
Films about race and ethnicity
Films about racism
Films directed by Chris Menges
Films set in 1963
Films set in South Africa
Films set in the 1960s
Films shot in Zimbabwe
1980s political drama films
Political films based on actual events
Slovo family
Films about mother–daughter relationships
Zimbabwean drama films
English-language Zimbabwean films
1988 directorial debut films
1988 drama films
Cannes Grand Prix winners
1980s English-language films
1980s British films
Films whose writer won the Best Original Screenplay BAFTA Award