“Edge of your seat documentary thriller” - Variety
For our closing film of the festival, we are proud to host the award-winning documentary London Recruits, which tells the fascinating story of the undercover missions carried out by ordinary Londoners-turned-freedom fighters during South African apartheid. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film’s director Gordon Main.
In 1967, opposition to the racist apartheid regime inside the country had been annihilated, with opposition figures either imprisoned, tortured or killed. It seemed that all hope of liberation was at an end. Meanwhile, in exile, African National Congress (ANC) leader Oliver Tambo initiates a secret plan to send young freedom fighter Ronnie Kasrils eight thousand miles away, to London, where he, alongside a small cell of fellow exiles, turn to the ordinary young people of the British capital for help. So begins a series of daring undercover missions that sent shock waves through the regime, including an audacious mission in which several synchronised pamphlet bombs were detonated across the country, which spread the ANC’s call to end apartheid, convincing the authorities and the oppressed population that hope lives on.
Director Gordon Main creates a vivid account of the perilous geopolitics of the time with never-before-seen archive footage, cinematic recreations and candid testimony from the London Recruits themselves, eyewitnesses and even secret police.
London Recruits is a compelling, suspenseful journey into the heart of apartheid South Africa, which celebrates the courageous working-class heroes, who believed in deeds over words and whose moral opposition to racism and unyielding belief in equality was enough justification for them to risk their own safety and freedom for the emancipation of others.