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