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AMOK

BURDIGALA PRODUCTION - as SALES All rights, World

Book adaptation - Completed 1983

- Year of production
- 1983
- Genres
- Book adaptation, Historical, Drama
- Countries
- MOROCCO
- Synopsis
- During the apartheid of the early seventies in South Africa, the paths of destiny cross for two families – one black the other white – when,unwillingly, they are confronted with the tragic consequences of racial discrimination; forerunner to the Soweto uprising of 1976.
  Matthew Sempala, a teacher in a Zulu village in South Africa, receives a letter from Reverend Norje to inform him of his sister Josephine’s illness in Johannesburg. He decides to go and see her in spite of the risks involved in such a journey.
  Once there he discovers that the illness was just a pretext to get him to convince Josephine to give up drugs, prostitution and violence. His brother Delius, an activist Union leader, shows him the realities of life for the black miners and workers in that South African metropolis.
  When Matthew goes off to search for his son Gasha, he finds him behind bars, in prison. Gasha was instrumental in the assasination of Elton Horn, a young white journalist – a liberal who, in this land of apartheid, was a fierce defender of the rights of blacks. Jaarsveld, the chief of police, above all suspicion,plans to cover up this political affair as a non-political crime.
  The Reverend Norje in response to a question worded by Matthew and asked by a lawyer, says, ‘When a black man kills a white man in this country, even God is not merciful!’ Gasha will hang.
  A few years later, Horn - the father of the journalist, Elton- old and disillusioned, after the massacre of the children in Soweto, confides in his faithful black houseboy: ‘I fear this one thing in my life: the day we start to love them, will be the day they begin to hate us.’