Mandela Movie Opens Worldwide
THUNDER BAY – A chronicle of Nelson Mandela’s life journey from his childhood in a rural village through to his inauguration as the first democratically elected president of South Africa.
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom chronicles the life and times of South African civil rights leader Nelson Mandela leading up to his election as the country’s first black President under a proper democracy.
After briefly touching on his youth in a rural African village, the film introduces Mandela (Idris Elba) – also referred to as ‘Madiba’ – as a lawyer, when he soon joined the African National Congress (ANC) as a courtroom fighter in the battle against institutionalized racism and race-based social/economic inequality in Apartheid-era South Africa.
“Long Walk to Freedom” also shows Nelson Mandela’s twenty-seven years in prison. Eighteen long years of that imprisonment were on the remote rock known as Robben Island.
The film touches on the efforts in the African National Congress as the organization turned to violence after the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre.
The movie spends a lot of the time depicting Mandela’s return to peaceful resistance, and his increasingly large international stature during his long years of incarceration.
The movie opens at many theatres around the world. It is not yet scheduled for Silver City in Thunder Bay.