Escape from Pretoria

Australia, South Africa, UK 2020, 106 mins, English

Director Francis Annan, featuring Daniel Radcliffe, Daniel Webber, Ian Hart

Based on the real-life prison break of two political captives, this is a race-against-time thriller set in the tumultuous apartheid days of South Africa in the late 1970s.  Two white South Africans, Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, are arrested for carrying out anti-apartheid missions. Sentenced to twelve years and eight years respectively, they are transported to Pretoria Prison where Jenkin plans their daring escape.  In the prison they meet veteran ANC activist Denis Goldberg, who received a life sentence in 1964 alongside Nelson Mandela for previous work against apartheid. He shows them the ropes but discourages them from trying to escape.

“The film has something pleasingly traditional about it, with tense nail-biting moments and touches of The Great Escape and Papillon.” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)