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A DRY WHITE SEASON

By Euzhan PALCY

Drama - Completed 1989

Festivals
& Awards

Toronto - TIFF 2019

TIFF Cinematheque

- Year of production
- 1989
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- USA
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Duration
- 106 mn
- Director(s)
- Euzhan PALCY
- Synopsis
- Following her acclaimed debut Sugar Cane Alley, and with Hollywood funders chasing after her, Martinique-born Euzhan Palcy went from the West Indies to South Africa with her next project — and became the first Black woman to direct a Hollywood studio film. A Dry White Season is Palcy's adaptation of Afrikaner novelist André Brink's tale of moral and political awakening in Apartheid-era Johannesburg. White, well-intentioned Ben du Toit (a heady Donald Sutherland) is a South African–born schoolteacher forced to confront his privileged inertia after the brutal assault of his Black gardener's son at the hands of white, government-backed authorities. Sutherland anchors a multifarious cast that includes Susan Sarandon, celebrated South African stage actor Zakes Mokae — the star among a talented ensemble of Black South Africans whom Palcy insisted on casting over Black American actors — and a towering Marlon Brando in his return to the screen after a nine-year hiatus.