A World Apart

In a whites-only neighbourhood of Johannesburg in the sixties, thirteen-year-old Molly Roth is trying to assemble what is happening around her out of fragments. Her father disappears one night, having only just avoided arrest. Not long after, her mother is detained. Some of Molly's white friends turn away from her, and the family's friendships with black South Africans take on an entirely different weight. Shawn Slovo wrote the screenplay out of her own parents' lives: Ruth First and Joe Slovo were among the best known figures in the fight against apartheid. Ruth First was killed in 1982, in exile, by a parcel bomb sent to her. Chris Menges, who came to this from cinematography, made his directing debut here and tells the politics from the place a child cannot follow them. It took the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1988, and the best actress award was shared between Jodhi May, Barbara Hershey and Linda Mvusi.