12 Films & TV Shows Set In South Africa During The 1980s
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Moffie
🇿🇦 South Africa The 1980sMoffie (a derogatory Afrikaans term for a gay man) follows the story of Nicholas van der Swart: from a very young age, he realises he is different. Try as he may, he cannot live up to the macho image expected of him by his family, by his heritage. Set during the South African border war against communism, this is a long-overdue story about the emotional and physical suffering endured by countless young men.
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Winnie
🇿🇦 South Africa The 1950s The 1960s The 1970s The 1980sWhile her husband served a life sentence, paradoxically kept safe and morally uncontaminated, Winnie Mandela rode the raw violence of apartheid, fighting on the front line and underground. This is the untold story of the mysterious forces that combined to take her down, labeling him a saint, her, a sinner.
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Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
🇿🇦 South Africa The 1970s The 1980s The 1990s The 1960s The 1940sIt is an ideal for which I am prepared to die. — A chronicle of Nelson Mandela's life journey from his childhood in a rural village through to his inauguration as the first democratically elected president of South Africa.
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Endgame
🇿🇦 South Africa The 1980sThe time is the late '80s, a crucial period in the history of South Africa. President P.W. Botha is hanging on to power by a thread as the African National Congress (ANC) takes up arms against apartheid and the country tumbles toward insurrection. A British mining concern is convinced that their interests would be better served in a stable South Africa and they quietly dispatch Michael Young, their head of public affairs, to open an unofficial dialogue between the bitter rivals. Assembling a reluctant yet brilliant team to pave the way to reconciliation by confronting obstacles that initially seem insurmountable, Young places his trust in ANC leader Thabo Mbeki and Afrikaner philosophy professor Willie Esterhuyse. It is their empathy that will ultimately serve as the catalyst for change by proving more powerful than the terrorist bombs that threaten to disrupt the peaceful dialogue.
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District 9
🇿🇦 South Africa The 2010s The 1980sYou are not welcome here. — Thirty years ago, aliens arrive on Earth. Not to conquer or give aid, but to find refuge from their dying planet. Separated from humans in a South African area called District 9, the aliens are managed by Multi-National United, which is unconcerned with the aliens' welfare but will do anything to master their advanced technology. When a company field agent contracts a mysterious virus that begins to alter his DNA, there is only one place he can hide: District 9.
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Goodbye Bafana
🇿🇦 South Africa The 1970s The 1980s The 1960sThe true story of a white South African racist whose life was profoundly altered by the black prisoner he guarded for twenty years. The prisoner's name was Nelson Mandela.
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Catch a Fire
🇿🇦 South Africa The 1980s The 1990sThe spark that ignites us, unites us. — The true story of anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, and particularly the life of Patrick Chamusso, a timid foreman at Secunda CTL, the largest synthetic fuel plant in the world. Patrick is wrongly accused, imprisoned and tortured for an attempt to bomb the plant, with the injustice transforming the apolitical worker into a radicalised insurgent, who then carries out his own successful sabotage mission.
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Faith Like Potatoes
🇿🇲 Zambia 🇿🇦 South Africa The 1970s The 1980sFrank Rautenbach leads a strong cast as Angus Buchan, a Zambian farmer of Scottish heritage, who leaves his farm in the midst of political unrest and racially charged land reclaims and travels south with his family to start a better life in KwaZulu Natal,South Africa.
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Dangerous Ground
California 🇿🇦 South Africa The 1980s The 1990sWhat he wants is revenge. What he gets is the fight of his life. — Vusi Madlazi returns to the South African village he left as a young boy to bury his father. He meets up with his brother Ernest, who tells him their other brother Stephen couldn't be contacted. Vusi goes to Johannesburg to find him, but at first can only find his neighbor/girlfriend, Karin, a stripper. Vusi proceeds to learn how conditions have changed since the end of apartheid, not always for the better for black men.
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Lethal Weapon 2
California 🇿🇦 South Africa The 1980sThe magic is back! — In the opening chase, Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh stumble across a trunk full of Krugerrands. They follow the trail to a South African diplomat who's using his immunity to conceal a smuggling operation. When he plants a bomb under Murtaugh's toilet, the action explodes!
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The Gods Must Be Crazy II
🇧🇼 Botswana 🇿🇦 South Africa The 1980sThis Time, Everybody's Going Crazier. — Xixo is back again. This time, his children accidentally stow away on a fast-moving poachers' truck, unable to get off, and Xixo sets out to rescue them. Along the way, he encounters a couple of soldiers trying to capture each other and a pilot and passenger of a small plane, who are each having a few problems of their own.
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The Gods Must Be Crazy
🇧🇼 Botswana 🇿🇦 South Africa The 1980sThe critics are raving... the natives are restless... and the laughter is non-stop! — A Coca-Cola bottle dropped from an airplane raises havoc among a normally peaceful tribe of African bushmen who believe it to be a utensil of the gods.
