Best movies like Mandela and de Klerk
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Mandela and de Klerk Starring Sidney Poitier, Michael Caine, Tina Lifford, Gerry Maritz, and more. If you liked Mandela and de Klerk then you may also like: Vendetta, The Wilby Conspiracy, Nightjohn, Red Dust, Act of Vengeance and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine both received Emmy nominations for their performances in this made-for-TV movie. The plot follows Nelson Mandela's 27-year struggle to end apartheid.
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The Wilby Conspiracy
Having spent 10 years in prison for nationalist activities, Shack Twala is finally ordered released by the South African Supreme Court but he finds himself almost immediately on the run after a run-in with the police. Assisted by his lawyer Rina Van Niekirk and visiting British engineer Jim Keogh, he heads for Capetown where he hopes to recover a stash of diamonds, meant to finance revolutionary activities, that he had entrusted to a dentist before his incarceration. Along the way, they are followed by Major Horn of the South African State security bureau and it becomes apparent that he has no intention of arresting them until they reach their final destination
Act of Vengeance
In 1969, an administrator runs against the corrupt president of the United Coal Miners Union, and becomes the target of a murder plot.
Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony
The struggle to eradicate apartheid in South Africa has been chronicled over time, but no one has addressed the vital role music plays in this challenge. This documentary by Lee Hirsch recounts a fascinating and little-known part of South Africa's political history through archival footage, interviews and, of course, several mesmerizing musical performances.
Cadence
As punishment for drunken, rebellious behavior, a young white soldier is thrown into a stockade populated entirely by black inmates. But instead of falling victim to racial hatred, the soldier joins forces with his fellow prisoners and rises up against the insanely tyrannical and bigoted prison warden.
Catch a Fire
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.
Escape from Pretoria
South Africa, 1978. Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, two white political activists from the African National Congress imprisoned by the apartheid regime, put a plan in motion to escape from the infamous Pretoria Prison.
Cry Freedom
A dramatic story, based on actual events, about the friendship between two men struggling against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. Donald Woods is a white liberal journalist in South Africa who begins to follow the activities of Stephen Biko, a courageous and outspoken black anti-apartheid activist.
Cry, the Beloved Country
A South-African preacher goes to search for his wayward son who has committed a crime in the big city.
Sarafina!
The plot centers on students involved in the Soweto Riots, in opposition to the implementation of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools. The stage version presents a school uprising similar to the Soweto uprising on June 16, 1976. A narrator introduces several characters among them the school girl activist Sarafina. Things get out of control when a policeman shoots several pupils in a classroom. Nevertheless, the musical ends with a cheerful farewell show of pupils leaving school, which takes most of act two. In the movie version Sarafina feels shame at her mother's (played by Miriam Makeba in the film) acceptance of her role as domestic servant in a white household in apartheid South Africa, and inspires her peers to rise up in protest, especially after her inspirational teacher, Mary Masombuka (played by Whoopi Goldberg in the film version) is imprisoned.
A Dry White Season
During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.
Ghosts of Mississippi
A Mississippi district attorney and the widow of Medgar Evers struggle to bring a white supremacist to justice for the 1963 murder of the civil rights leader.
Gideon's Trumpet
True story of Clarence Gideon's fight to be appointed counsel at the expense of the state. This landmark case led to the Supreme Court's decision which extended this right to all criminal defendants.
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
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.
A Private Matter
The true story of Romper Room host "Miss Sherri" Finkbine, who, after the devastating effects of thalidomide were discovered in the early 1960s, sparked a firestorm of controversy with her determination to obtain an abortion.
Heavens Fall
Successful New York attorney Sam Leibowitz travels to the South in 1933 to defend nine young black men accused of raping two women on an Alabama freight train.
The Rosa Parks Story
A seamstress recalls events leading to her act of peaceful defiance that prompted the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.
Freedom Song
Freedom Song (2000) is a made-for-TV film based on true stories of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1960s. It tells the story of the struggle of African Americans to register to vote in the fictional town of Quinlan. In the midst of the Freedom Summer, a group of high school students in the small town are eager to make grassroots changes in their own community. The young activists meet resistance not only from white southerners, but from their parents, who have experienced firsthand the violence that can result from speaking out.[1] As high school students band together with the support of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, they make strides in registering African-American voters and gaining awareness for their cause.
A Lesson Before Dying
In the 1940s South, an African-American man is wrongly accused of the killing a a white store owner. In his defense, his white attorney equates him with a lowly hog, to indicate that he didn't have the sense to know what he was doing. Nevertheless convicted, he is sentenced to die, but his godmother and the aunt of the local schoolteacher convince school teacher go to the convicted man's cell each day to try to reaffirm to him that he is not an animal but a man with dignity.
Selma, Lord, Selma
In 1965 Alabama, an 11 year old girl is touched by a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. and becomes a devout follower. But her resolution is tested when she joins others in the famed march from Selma to Montgomery.
Ruby Bridges
When six-year-old Ruby Bridges is chosen to be the first African-American to integrate her local elementary school, she is subjected to the true ugliness of racism for the first time.
Mr. and Mrs. Loving
A moving and uplifting drama about the effects of interracial marriage in the 1960s. Friends since childhood, and loved by both families, this couple are exiled after their wedding and have to wage a courageous battle to find their place in America as a loving family.
Assault at West Point: The Court-Martial of Johnson Whittaker
The story of Johnson Whittaker, one of the first African-American cadets admitted to West Point. Tied down and beaten by his fellow cadets
Race to Freedom: The Underground Railroad
A number of slaves risk their lives to escape their masters with their only help coming from the famous secret slave escape network.
A Gathering of Old Men
A regular day in a Louisiana sugarcane plantation changes course when a local white farmer is shot in self defense. A group of old, black men takes a courageous step by coming forward en masse to take responsibility for the killing of a white racist, whom one of their members has shot. As the sheriff confronts the suspects, the young plantation owner stands alone in her daring defense of this group of men, provoking racial tension that makes a compelling drama.
Brother John
An enigmatic man (Sidney Poitier) returns to his Alabama hometown as his sister is dying of cancer and incites the suspicion of notable town officials.
Miss Evers' Boys
The true story of the US Government's 1932 Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiments, in which a group of black test subjects were allowed to die, despite a cure having been developed.
Color of Justice
Four young black men kill a white woman. Now the D.A. is very cautious how to pursue this case because it might start a riot. And adding fuel to the fire is a bombastic and vocal black community leader, who's saying that they will not have a fair trial and that they were justified in their actions because they were in fear for their lives
Bopha!
In this story of a black policeman during South African apartheid, Danny Glover plays the cop, who believes he's trying to help his people, even while serving as a pawn of the racist government. When his son gets involved in the anti-apartheid movement, he finds himself torn between his family and what he believes is his duty.
The Tuskegee Airmen
During the Second World War, a special project is begun by the US Army Air Corps to integrate African American pilots into the Fighter Pilot Program. Known as the "Tuskegee Airman" for the name of the airbase at which they were trained, these men were forced to constantly endure harassement, prejudice, and much behind the scenes politics until at last they were able to prove themselves in combat.
10,000 Black Men Named George
In the 1920s, the rights of American workers to join a labor union was still considered an open question, and African-Americans were routinely denied their civil and economic rights. 10,000 Black Men Named George, the title, refers to the fact Pullman porters were often called "George" by white passengers, which was considered a racial slur.
Eleni
Nick is a writer in New York when he gets posted to a bureau in Greece. He has waited 30 years for this. He wants to know why his mother was killed in the civil war years earlier. In a parallel plot line we see Nick as a young boy and his family as they struggle to survive in the occupied Greek hillside. The plot lines converge as Nick's investigations bring him closer to the answers.
Death of Apartheid
The secret history of the negotiations that led to Mandela's release from prison, the ANC becoming the government of South Africa, and the end of apartheid.
The Bang Bang Club
In the early to mid '90s, when the South African system of apartheid was in its death throes, four photographers - Greg Marinovich, Kevin Carter, Ken Oosterbroek and João Silva - bonded by their friendship and a sense of purpose, worked together to chronicle the violence and upheaval leading up to the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela as president. Their work is risky and dangerous, potentially fatally so, as they thrust themselves into the middle of chaotic clashes between forces backed by the government (including Inkatha Zulu warriors) and those in support of Mandela's African National Congress.
Endgame
The 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.
A Woman Called Golda
The story of the Russian-born, Wisconsin-raised woman who rose to become Israel's prime minister in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Cesar Chavez
A biography of the civil-rights activist and labor organizer Cesar Chavez. Chronicling the birth of a modern American labour movement, Cesar Chavez tells the story of the famed civil rights leader and labour organiser torn between his duties as a husband and father and his commitment to securing a living wage for farm workers. Passionate but soft-spoken, Chavez embraced non-violence as he battled greed and prejudice in his struggle to bring dignity to working people.
The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson
A film about the early life of the baseball star in the army, particulary his court-martial for insubordination regarding segragation.
Guilt by Association
Life is good for Susan, her two children and new boyfriend Russell. But life abruptly changes when she discovers her perfect boyfriend is a drug dealer. Realising the danger this could bring to her family she tells him to leave. Suddenly her house is raided and Susan is arrested as a co-conspirator in Russell's drug business. Her situation goes from bad to worse when she finds herself behind bars with violent criminals. How will she ever prove her innocence when the system seems against her? Guilt By Association is a disturbing story based on true events.
Afterburn
Based on a true story, one woman takes on the U.S. military and General Dynamics; maker of the F-16, thought to be the very best tactical fighter in the world. Air Force Captain Theodore T. Harduvel was one of the best F-16 pilots the U.S. had to offer. After much digging, Janet Harduvel discovers a joint military and General Dynamic cover-up. She proves to be unwavering in her search for the truth to clear his name.
Samaritan: The Mitch Snyder Story
Outraged by the treatment of New York City’s unhoused residents, an activist brings national attention to the issue by taking their case to Congress.
Citizen Verdict
A sensationalist TV producer has a novel new idea to shake up American reality TV: Citizen Verdict, a live show where accused criminals are tried and potentially convicted by the viewing public.
Vendetta
Based on a true story, Vendetta tells the shocking and tragic story of a group of Sicilian immigrants working on the New Orleans docks in the 1890's. After the Chief of Police was brutally murdered, much of the city's Sicilian population was rounded up and brought in for questioning. Eventually, thirteen were formally tried for murder and nine went to trial, and while they were acquitted, a series of brutal lynchings showed they had as much to fear from the city's general populace as they did from the corrupt police force.