Sarafina! (1992) on Netflix
In Soweto, teenager Sarafina idolizes Nelson Mandela and dreams of playing him in the school play. Her teacher Mary leads prayer songs while police pressure the school and the students protest.
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- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.4/102,473 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes60%
Trailer
Plot summary
A school play is coming, and Sarafina, a teenager in Soweto, wants the part of Nelson Mandela, who is serving a life sentence for conspiracy and treason against apartheid. The weary principal asks the history teacher Mary to lead prayer songs and calm the racial violence spreading across the country. Police visit the school and press the principal to prosecute students they blame for riots and for schools burning down. Sarafina's boyfriend Crocodile leads students against taxes set by the Boers, and police beat him. Sarafina's mother works as a housekeeper in a white home and dislikes her daughter's daydreaming, while Sarafina longs for the freedom her activist father wanted before he died.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sarafina! (1992)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was shot on location at Morris Isaacson High School in Soweto, South Africa, the school that had been a center of the 1976 Soweto student uprisings.
- Because racism was still prevalent in post-apartheid South Africa, there were concerns that filming scenes of protest and rioting would fan the flames, so the prop military vehicles were emblazoned with the insignia "Sarafina!" to assure the public that a movie was being filmed.
- Many of the actors had been arrested, or had the police break down their doors in the middle of the night. Almost everyone had either first or second-hand experience with the movement, and the children in the cast were performing what they had lived.
- At the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, Whoopi Goldberg was announced to play Mary Masombuka; she was reportedly the first Black American actress to film a project in South Africa.
- After no Hollywood studio was willing to finance the adaptation of the Broadway musical, producer Anant Singh raised the funds himself, with the BBC and the French company Revcom among the investors.
- Many of the extras and some of the cast members had taken part in the real-life resistance in Soweto, while Miriam Makeba, who appears in the film, had been a political exile from the country.
