Long Walk to Freedom cost over R00m to make

The film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom cost just over R350 million to make, film-maker Anant Singh said on Saturday.

The films budget was 35 million US dollars. Putting the finance together and keeping [it] South African was challenging, Singh told reporters at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Houghton, north of Johannesburg.

[The film] is the fruition of a journey of over 25 years. A journey that has been a very rocky road.

Singh said the production of the film took just over two years to complete.

When production ended last year Singh went to Mandelas home in Qunu, Eastern Cape to show him snippets of the film and pictures from some of the scenes.

He said Mandela found it amusing.

Singh said the anti-apartheid icon asked him Is this me? when looking at a picture from a scene where Elba was wearing one the famous Madiba shirts and was sporting grey hair and an aged face.

Zindzi Mandela told reporters she found the film therapeutic and that she wished she had watched it alone.

Well executed

It was very emotional to watch it... His [Singh] ability to summarise so many moments [in our lives] was incredible.

It is extremely well executed and sincere, Zindzi said.

She said she watched the film with Singh, her mother Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and her husband Molapo Motlhajwa.

African National Congress stalwart and one of the trustees of the Mandela Trust Tokyo Sexwale told reporters that Mandela was no longer ill.

Madiba says of his health, I am not ill, Im just old, Sexwale said.

Mandela spent almost three months in a Pretoria hospital for a recurring lung infection.

He was discharged on 1 September and was receiving medical treatment at his home in Houghton.

http://www.channel24.co.za

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