63rd Cannes: Winnie, the movie, Winnie, the dilemma

18 May 2010

CANNES, FRANCE: There is no marketing hype that outsells controversy. And the more critical the controversy, the better. Look what The Vatican's ban on The Da Vinci Code did for Dan Brown. Maybe the producers of a forthcoming film about Winnie Mandela are secretly hoping for the same sales-oomph.

It was during my first Cannes Film Festival, while interviewing director Darrell Roodt, that he told me about a movie on Winnie Madikizela Mandela he was working on. He couldn't go on the record at that time, but he told me Jennifer Hudson was interested. Then came the tragedy in which three of her family members were killed, allegedly by her brother-in-law, and everything looked shaky and uncertain. Three years later, the project was back on track and the news was announced that the Oscar- and Grammy-winning actress would indeed be playing the former wife of Nelson Mandela in Roodt's film.

Following the announcement in December last year, the movie has since taken on the adjective of controversial (although the very subject matter would make it almost automatically so). But, true to expectations, it has become more so because the Creative Workers Union of South Africa called a press conference to voice their dissatisfaction over the choice of a "non-South African" actress to play the part of a home-grown political stalwart.

The fuss centred on Hudson, this time. But we heard it all before when Morgan Freeman was in town to promote the release of "Invictus" and so it continued, attracting publicity from international news agencies abroad. Then Madikizela Mandela expressed her anger at not being consulted and had her lawyers draw up papers threatening to stop production.

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