A Dry White Season

We are pupils in the10th grade in Dumont d'Urville in Normandy (France). We are all sixteen and we have been learning English for six years. We watched the film A dry white season in class and we had to write a review on it.

It is a film shot by Euzhan Palcy in 1997 which is based from a novel by André Brink.

The main characters are Ben du Toit played by Donald Sutherland, Captain Stolz played by Jürgen Prochnow, Stanley played by Zakes Mokae and Gordon played by Winston Ntshona.

The plot deals with apartheid in South Africa in 1976. A naïve history teacher Ben du Toit decides to avenge his gardener's death, Gordon, a black man. He is tortured to death by the white police. Ben becomes aware of the issue of segregation in his country and he sides with the blacks.

We all liked this film because it gave another vision of apartheid, more shocking and violent than the one we had imagined. This film is educative because too many people ignore what white men did to the blacks at that time and even recently. Nowadays, colored people endure discrimination in many countries even if apartheid, slavery have been abolished, so it is a very interesting film, it shows a real and current problem : racism which still exists in our society. We don't know if it can make people's mentalities evolve but it will certainly make people question themselves.

We would recommend this film to our friends because we think people are not informed enough about apartheid.