Film

A World Apart

Name: A World Apart
Genre: Drama
Released: 1988
Cast: Barbara Hershey, David Suchet, Jeroen Krabbé, Paul Freeman, Tim Roth

A World Apart follows a thirteen-year-old girl navigating the collapse of her family and friendships as her activist parents are arrested under apartheid. Shot in South Africa itself, it's a lucid, unsentimental look at how political terror filters through domestic life—how ideology becomes personal, how safety becomes fragile. For anyone interested in how systems of oppression damage the people living inside them, even the ones who resist.

TMDb rating

3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a political drama told through a thirteen-year-old's bewildered eyes, where the bigger injustices arrive as small social cracks in a family's daily life.

Skip it if you need brisk plotting or a clear political argument, because this moves at a patient pace and leaves much of the history to be inferred from silences and whispered conversations.

What it asks of you: Settle in for just under two hours of unhurried scenes, where long stretches of quiet domestic life carry the weight and the tension stays low-key rather than explosive.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Cry Freedom1987

Richard Attenborough's portrait of Steve Biko and the journalist who documented his murder. Companion piece to A World Apart—both made the same year, both grappling with South African apartheid through Western eyes, both urgent and morally serious.

But Earnest in a way that can feel heavy-handed. The second half shifts focus away from Biko himself, which some find deflating.

The Power of One1992

Another girl coming of age against apartheid's backdrop, but through a privileged piano student learning to see the world beyond her school's walls. Gentler than A World Apart, more about awakening than arrest.

But Leaning hard on the white saviour narrative. Feels more like a 1990s Hollywood take on the subject than a lived experience.

Tsotsi2005

A Johannesburg township seen from inside—a young street gang member and a carjacking that forces moral reckoning. Shot with clarity and brutal honesty about poverty and urban violence, and it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

But The tone shifts between realism and something more parable-like, and that tonal mix won't work for everyone.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from A World Apart

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Come and See1985

Both films use a young protagonist's perspective to show how historical atrocity becomes lived, personal reality. Both refuse to flinch from the cost of witnessing.

A Soviet film following a boy through the Nazi invasion of Belarus—not a war film, a descent into hell. Shot with such visceral power that you feel the complete annihilation of innocence. A masterpiece and a wound.

But One of the most difficult films ever made. The violence is not stylised; it is relentless and graphic. Many people cannot finish it. You will not feel good afterwards.

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom2013

Idris Elba as Nelson Mandela, tracing his life from youth through twenty-seven years in prison and beyond. Epic scale, personal scope, and genuinely moving in its second half.

But The first half feels dutiful, and the film sometimes mistakes earnestness for depth.

In Custody1994

Ismail Merchant directing Shashi Kapoor in a story of a young writer trying to interview an aging Urdu poet in post-Partition India. Quiet, literary, about the violence hiding in bureaucracy and indifference.

But Very slow and unhurried. If you need plot momentum, this will test your patience.

Dancer in the Dark2000

Lars von Trier's Björk as a woman in 1960s America working toward blindness, finding joy in musical fantasy while her real life darkens. A film about dignity under impossible circumstance, made with volcanic intensity.

But Extremely bleak and emotionally punishing. The ending is devastating, and von Trier's style is deliberately provocative—not a comfort watch.

Kes1970

A boy in industrial Yorkshire and his relationship with a hawk. Ken Loach's masterpiece about class, cruelty, and the small moments of grace that keep people alive. Raw and alive in a way that feels true.

But The violence—adult and child—is casual and persistent. The ending is bleak, and there's no redemption in sight.

A Prophet2009

Jacques Audiard's film of a young man's rise inside a French prison. Brutal, unsentimental, visually stunning—about power, survival, and the terrible education institutions provide.

But It's a prison film, so violence and degradation are woven through it. The protagonist is not likeable, and the film doesn't ask you to like him.

The Kitchen2019

Three women take over their husbands' organized crime operation in 1970s New York. Andrea Corr, Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss in a revenge film that has genuine bite and style.

But The tonal balance between crime drama and female empowerment fantasy doesn't always hold. Some of the plotting feels convenient.

The Act of Killing2012

Both examine how ordinary lives are shaped by state violence and political terror. But where A World Apart shows us the view from the persecuted, this shows the view from the persecutors—they're opposite mirrors of the same historical moment.

A documentary where the filmmaker asks Indonesian death squad leaders to reenact the murders they committed in 1966. It sounds impossible, and it is—a film about how perpetrators construct their own narratives and live inside lies. Essential, hypnotic, unlike anything else.

But It's explicit and disorienting. Watching men perform their own atrocities as entertainment creates a moral vertigo that some find unbearable. Also nearly three hours.