News

The 45th Durban Intl. Film Festival kicked off Thursday, as the world celebrated the birthday of freedom fighter and South Africa’s first Black president Nelson Mandela, with a rousing defense of hard-won personal liberties and an insistence that the art of cinema remains “as vital as ever.”

“As we celebrate 30 years of democracy and with this 45th edition of Durban Intl. Film Festival opening on Nelson Mandela Day, we also consider the role of cinema and filmmakers in reflecting society and in creating visions of a better world,” festival manager Andrea Voges said at Thursday night’s opening ceremony.

“We should never take our freedom and our right to freedom of artistic expression for granted. Many filmmakers and artists around the world create under extraordinary pressure and in great danger,” she continued. “We see the art form of cinema to be as vital as ever in challenging, confronting, enlightening and entertaining the audience.

The 45th Durban Film Festival fittingly kicks off this year on Nelson Mandela Intl. Day, a worldwide celebration of South Africa’s first Black president, whose tireless efforts to bring an end to apartheid led to the country’s first democratic elections 30 years ago.

Three decades after the historic victory of Mandela’s African National Congress party, South Africans are wrestling with the progress and setbacks since their nation’s audacious transition to majority rule. Though the country has certainly taken bold strides in its efforts to redress the inequities of the apartheid era, looming challenges remain. Crime is rampant, as is corruption. Unemployment is high, particularly among an increasingly disgruntled generation born and raised in the democratic era. That the Anc has failed to deliver on many of its promises became stingingly obvious in elections earlier this year, when the party failed to win a majority of the vote...

Tara Moore’s “Legacy: The De-Colonized History of South Africa,” which opens the 45th edition of the Durban Intl. Film Festival on July 18, is the South African-born, U.S.-based actor and filmmaker’s attempt to grapple with the brutal history of her homeland as it celebrates the 30th anniversary of democracy.

Describing the film as an “exploration” of the long journey from the colonial era to the birth of a democratic nation, Moore examines how a legacy of systematic oppression that sought to quash the rights and hopes of the country’s Black majority laid the foundation for a modern nation still struggling to live up to its promise.

“South Africa is the most unequal country in the world,” the director tells Variety. “The question is, why does it remain that unequal if we have democracy? Why does that inequality persist if in ’94, by law, everything was supposedly equal?...