Escape From Pretoria (2020) on Netflix
South Africa, 1978. Two white activists, Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, are arrested for their African National Congress work and sent to Pretoria Prison, where Jenkin starts making wooden keys.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.8/1050,933 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes73%
Trailer
Plot summary
Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, white South Africans active in the African National Congress, carry out anti-apartheid missions. Both are arrested; Jenkin receives twelve years and Lee eight. At the courthouse Lee tries to flee and fails. Inside Pretoria Prison, Denis Goldberg, an older political prisoner held under four life sentences, guides them but discourages an escape attempt. Jenkin and Lee talk about escaping with Leonard Fontaine, another prisoner. Jenkin studies the prison, takes items from the wood shop to carve wooden keys that fit the cell locks, and slips out at night to make keys for other doors. Fontaine and Jenkin test the keys by leaving their cells and hiding in a closet as a guard passes. Lee and Jenkin hide the keys in the garden they tend.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Escape From Pretoria (2020)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Real-life escapee Tim Jenkin traveled to Adelaide to coach Daniel Radcliffe on his accent and appeared as an extra, playing a prisoner seated next to Radcliffe in the visiting-room scene.
SPOILER
The real escapees fled through Mozambique and Tanzania to London after triggering a huge manhunt, continued their anti-apartheid work with the African National Congress, and were pardoned in 1991, while fellow prisoner Denis Goldberg was released in 1985 after 22 years behind bars.- The score borrows two pieces by Mozart, the Dies Irae from his Requiem and the Kyrie from his Mass in C minor, the latter also prominently used in Robert Bresson's classic prison-escape film A Man Escaped.
- Sam Neill was originally cast as Goldberg, in May 2017, on an Australia-UK co-production co-financed by Arclight Films, New York-based Magna Entertainment and the South Australian Film Corporation.
- The film is based on the 2003 book Inside Out: Escape from Pretoria Prison, written by Tim Jenkin, who was one of the men who actually escaped from the prison.
