Cry Freedom (1987)
Directed by Richard Attenborough
A dramatic story, based on actual events, about the friendship between two men struggling against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. Donald Woods is a white liberal journalist in South Africa who begins to follow the activities of Stephen Biko, a courageous and outspoken black anti-apartheid activist.
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What critics compared Cry Freedom to
Frequently, race-issue films act as if black victims of racism don’t matter at all; Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom (1987), about South African leader Stephen Biko, is focused almost entirely on Kevin Kline’s fleeing journalist.
Based on the bestest-seller by Kathryn Stockett, The Help joins Glory , Cry Freedom , Driving Miss Daisy , and many other noble adaptations in filtering the black experience through the white experience, but credit Stockett (and the film) for conceiving a sneaky end-around.
It's also familiar because Hollywood stories of racism usually skew to the white character leading the charge against injustice (Mississippi Burning, Glory, Cry Freedom).
It's how you get Cry Freedom, a thriller about Steve Biko (Denzel Washington) that mostly locks Biko into flashbacks while a white journalist (Kevin Kline) tries to flee apartheid-era South Africa; a movie about the death of Medgar Evers that's focused on his assassin; Steven Spielberg legislative historical dramas about white men fighting over who owns black people and what it means to do so.
Corruption, murder and civil war in Africa at the hands of rebels/international companies/governments can make compelling viewing in the hands of the right film maker (Cry Freedom, Hotel Rwanda and The Constant Gardener, etc).
Regardless of how well the story is told, there's always something slightly suspicious about using a white man as a vehicle to examine the struggle of another culture; remember the ill-fated "Cry Freedom," in which the experiences of South African legend Steven Biko were shown through the eyes of a white English journalist?