A Dry White Season

This film is funded in part by the Regional Arts & Culture Council and the Office of Arts & Culture.

A white middle class South African suburbanite (Donald Sutherland) with no interest in politics agrees to help his black gardener (Tony Award winner Winston Ntshona) find his jailed son. His investigation opens his eyes to the horrors committed by the secret police and turns him into a target.

Director Euzhan Palcy became the first black female director to have a film produced by a major Hollywood studio. Palcy went undercover in Soweto to research the riots. With the help of Dr. Motlana (Nelson Mandela’s and Desmond Tutu’s personal physician), she eluded the South African secret services by posing as a recording artist and flew local actors to the U.K. under artist visas and then down to Zimbabwe for location shoots to get around South African travel bans.

Initially censored by officials who said it could harm attempts at apartheid reform, it became one of the largest and last films about apartheid before Mandela’s release from prison.