Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa

Invited

South Africa’s struggle for freedom and democracy produced many heroes. Soft Vengeance focuses on the incomparable Albie Sachs, a wise and beloved white lawyer who was a leading member of the African National Conference. Through Sachs’s story, we go back to South Africa in 1955 when the People’s Congress defiantly declared that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it.” For the next thirty-five years, Mandela was disappeared to prison, and ANC leaders, including Sachs, were forced into exile, where they continued to be tracked by South African security forces. This film recounts their dangerous journey to abolish apartheid (including graphic footage of Sachs after his car was bombed) and follows the unimaginable task of rebuilding a country so deeply wounded by its past. How they accomplished the establishment of a new South African constitution gets to the heart of what makes people like Sachs different. Compassionate, eloquent, and optimistic, Sachs remains honor bound to moral rightness even when, through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he meets the man who tried to have him killed.  RS

Director

Abby Ginzberg

Producers

Abby Ginzberg, Ken Schneider

Editor

Ken Schneider

Release Year

2014

Festival Year

2014

Country

United States

Run Time

83 minutes

Premiere

World Premiere