SA Mandela doccie wins award
South African filmmaker Khalo Matabane was awarded the special jury award for his documentary 'A Letter to Nelson Mandela' at the recently held International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.
Matabane is part of a team of local documentary filmmakers who represented South Africa at the festival in the Netherlands, alongside a host of industry players from all over the world.
With ‘A Letter to Nelson Mandela’, the filmmaker sets out to cross-examine the former President’s ideas about reconciliation, freedom, and forgiveness by comparing them with those of other renowned intellectuals around the globe.
These include the Dalai Lama, Henry Kissinger, writer Wole Soyinka, film director Elia Suleiman, and US statesman Colin Powell.
Matababe intertwines the views of these thinkers with his own thoughts and memories of Mandela, and in doing so presents alternative viewpoints on the man and his political ideals.
Speaking to eNCA about the documentary earlier this year, Matabane said: “I am not searching for a single truth about him. The truth is in the contradictions of the versions.
“In this case I also knew that indirectly the documentary would attempt to answer my own personal question of why do I struggle with forgiveness on both a personal and political level.”
– TEAMtalk Media
