Born Free Media celebrates Khalo Matabane s prestigious award for A Letter to Nelson Mandela

A Letter to Nelson Mandela was awarded the Special Jury Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), the pre-eminent festival for creative documentaries.

Writer/director Khalo Matabane was an idealistic teenager with fanciful ideas about a post-apartheid era of freedom and justice when the great icon of liberation Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

In a personal odyssey encompassing an imaginary letter to Mandela and conversations with politicians, activists, intellectuals and artists, Matabane interrogates for himself the meaning of freedom, reconciliation and forgiveness, and challenges Mandelas legacy in todays world of conflict and inequality.

The film juxtaposes Matabane's inner quest for coherence in the current political context and the opinions of people who have known Mandela or whose perspectives and destinies have in some way been shaped by him - people like Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, Albie Sachs, Ariel Dorfman, Nuruddin Farah,Pumla Gqola, Wole Soyinka, Ronnie Kasrils the Dalai Lama and Zubeida Jaffer.

Matabane weighs equally the words of erudite thinkers and ordinary people like Charity Kondile who refuses to forgive her son's apartheid operative murderer, Dirk Coetzee despite the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing: Im just an ordinary mother, Im not in parliament, Im just flesh.

A Letter to Nelson Mandela was produced by Carolyn Carew of Born Free Media, a South African film and TV production company with a string of award-winning productions behind it, previously winning 7 awards at SAFTAS in 2007, Best Drama at Fespaco in 2008 and at Reims Film Festival France 2008 for When We Were Black which was directed by Khalo Matabane. Most recently for the Documentary, Sobukwe A Great Soul, which won five awards atthe SAFTAS in 2013.

The co-producers were Christian Beetz and Kerstin Meyer-Beetz fromGebruederbeetz film Produktion in Berlin who have extensive experience in international documentaries.

The producers are grateful to the following funders:

ZDF/Arte, Storyville BBC, Danish Broadcasting, the Department of Trade and Industry of SA, the National Film and Video Foundation of SA (NFVF), CASA Africa, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, the Gauteng Film Commission.

LINK:	http://www.filmcontact.com/africa/south-africa/born-free-media-celebra...
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