Film

Cry Freedom

Name: Cry Freedom
Genre: Drama
Released: 1987
Cast: Kevin Kline, Denzel Washington, Penelope Wilton, Kate Hardie, John Matshikiza

Drama

A 1987 drama about friendship across South Africa's racial divide. Kevin Kline plays a liberal journalist who comes to understand apartheid's brutality through his relationship with activist Steve Biko (Denzel Washington). Earnest, emotionally direct, sometimes melodramatic—made for audiences who want their conscience stirred and their faith in human decency restored.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are moved by a slow-building friendship between two men of different worlds, and by the quiet courage of ordinary people risking everything to say what they see.

Skip it if you want something brisk, since at over two and a half hours this is unhurried and its sober tone can feel like homework.

What it asks of you: It asks for patience and a long stretch of attention. It is weighty and grave, and it pays back in steady, earned emotion rather than quick jolts.

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

If you liked this

12 Years a Slave2013

A unflinching portrait of American slavery that, like Cry Freedom, traces one man's journey from complicity to moral awakening. Powerful performances and unforgettable direction make the historical horror visceral and unavoidable.

But Brutal and relentless. If you need catharsis or hope, this film will withhold it from you until the very end.

In the Name of the Father1993

Daniel Day-Lewis and Pete Postlethwaite as a father and son wrongly imprisoned under British law. Like Cry Freedom, it's about institutional injustice exposed through individual suffering, and the rage that comes with it.

But The pacing is baggy in places, and it occasionally chooses sentiment over honesty in ways that feel unearned.

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom2013

Idris Elba as Nelson Mandela across decades of struggle. Direct and sweeping, it covers much of the same ground as Cry Freedom but from the perspective of the resistance itself.

But Biopic energy means it sometimes skims over complexity. It wants you to admire Mandela more than to sit with difficult questions.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Cry Freedom

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Come and See1985

Both show how ordinary people become instruments of systemic brutality, but Come and See refuses the liberal journalist's distance—it puts you inside the machinery itself.

A Soviet film about a teenage boy conscripted into WWII. Like Cry Freedom, it documents the corruption of innocence by institutional evil, but through pure cinema rather than narrative comfort. Unbearably powerful.

But Shot in Russian, almost incomprehensibly dark, and genuinely difficult to sit through. It does not console you. This is not entertainment.

The Killing Fields1984

Another true story of atrocity and friendship under totalitarianism. Harrowing, beautifully shot, and genuinely moving about what it costs to bear witness to horror.

But The violence is graphic and the emotional weight never lets up. Some viewers find it exploitative of real tragedy.

Gandhi1982

Ben Kingsley in an epic that asks how one person's moral conviction can shift a nation. Gorgeous to look at and genuinely inspiring about nonviolent resistance.

But Nearly four hours. Some find it reverential to the point of blandness, smoothing over Gandhi's actual contradictions.

A World Apart1988

Set during South African apartheid and made the same year as Cry Freedom, this one follows a white teenager grappling with her activist mother's imprisonment. More intimate and less comfortable.

But The focus on the white family's perspective might frustrate viewers who wanted the story to centre Black resistance instead.

Darkest Hour2017

Gary Oldman as Churchill during the nation's gravest crisis. A study of how one person's moral clarity (or stubbornness) shapes historical moments. Impeccably crafted.

But It's fundamentally a film about powerful people in rooms. If you want to see systemic change from below, look elsewhere.

Hidden Figures2016

Three Black women scientists navigating institutional racism while helping America reach space. Inspiring without being false, and it balances individual character against structural injustice.

But The Hollywood ending feels designed to comfort white audiences. Some of the sting of real racism is softened for palatability.

The Last Temptation of Christ1988

Scorsese's controversial epic about faith tested under oppression. Like Cry Freedom, it traces someone's moral struggle as their world collapses. Visionary and strange.

But Aggressively uncommercial and spiritually unsettling. Many viewers find it blasphemous or simply exhausting.

Z1969

Both are about how authority suppresses dissent, but Z trusts cinema's form to tell that story rather than the righteousness of its characters.

A political thriller from Costa-Gavras about a suspicious death in a dictatorship. Faster-paced and more formally inventive than Cry Freedom, but asking identical questions about power, truth, and who gets to tell the story.

But Structurally complex and Greek-set, it may feel distant. The thriller mechanics sometimes overshadow the moral stakes.

The Act of Killing2012

Both examine how societies live with atrocity, but where Cry Freedom assumes moral clarity, The Act of Killing asks whether such clarity is even possible.

A documentary where the director interviews Indonesian death-squad leaders. It's about confronting atrocity, but sideways—asking perpetrators to re-enact their murders. Unbearably tense and philosophically extraordinary.

But It's asking you to sit with unrepentant men describing slaughter. Some find that obscene. It's also three hours of mounting dread.