![]() Fontaine (Mark Leonard Winter) becomes a sort of match to Jenkin's fire, pushing him to solve all the technical issues of their escape. The third man here is called Leonard Fontaine – which presumably means that Alex Moumbaris, who grew up in Australia before settling in France, did not co-operate with the film. This is not quite accurate: Goldberg initially joined the escape plan but pulled out when it became clear that only three men could realistically make it. Goldberg tells them they can try to escape if they want, but serving the full sentence is a political act, one that he chooses. He is ANC royalty, having been sentenced in the 1964 Rivonia trial along with Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. The doyen of the political prisoners at Pretoria is Denis Goldberg (Ian Hart), 15 years into a 22-year sentence. The cinematographer was the experienced Geoffrey Hall (Chopper, Red Dog, Australia Day) and he brings some lovely touches, accentuating the ingenuity of the escapees in crafting keys to unlock the many doors to freedom. Shooting a movie in 29 days when you needed 40 sometimes helps with that. It's tautly constructed, insanely tense and without a wasted scene. The movie is all about the break, and Annan does a fine job. These devices could deliver hundreds of political leaflets in public places with a non-lethal bang.ĭaniel Radcliffe stars in Escape from Pretoria. In the opening sequence of the film we see them set off a number of pamphlet 'bombs' in the streets of Cape Town. The Great Escape (1963) With an amazing ensemble cast that includes Hollywood icons like Steve McQueen, James Garner, James Coburn, and Charles Bronson, The Great Escape is a remarkable classic. He and Lee were born in South Africa and went to England in the early 1970s, joined the African National Congress in exile and were sent back as propaganda agents. ![]() Jenkin wrote the book on which the film is based. Breaker Morant was shot there in 1979 – right about the time that Tim Jenkin, Stephen Lee and Alex Moumbaris were breaking out of Pretoria in the real story. Most of the cast are Australian-born or resident, which accounts for some less-than-convincing South African accents, but Adelaide Gaol provides a convincing South African prison – and not for the first time. Funding from the South Australian Film Corporation made this an official UK/Australian co-production, with some inevitable compromises. The British producers had been working on this story, based on the dramatic escape of three white political prisoners from the Pretoria Prison for White Males – since at least 2012. ![]() The climate matches, the street architecture of Adelaide can be made to look like Cape Town in the '70s (as long as you don't need to see Table Mountain) and the film infrastructure is probably better than in most South African cities. Escape from Pretoria is a 2020 Australian prison film co-written and directed by Francis Annan, based on the real-life prison escape by three political prisoners in South Africa in 1979, starring Daniel Radcliffe and Daniel Webber. The production relocated to South Australia, which is not as silly as it sounds. A pacy screenplay, co-written by director Francis Annan and adapted from a book by Jenkin, rarely flags, but it’s the nervy camera, hugging the characters at hip height, the better to scrutinise each locked barrier to freedom, that most successfully builds the tension.He had big plans to shoot Escape from Pretoria in South Africa a couple of years ago, but the money fell through. An overwrought, chest-thumping score is surplus to requirements in a film that already feels as though everything, from the characters to the walls of the cells, is sodden with panic sweats. So through an ingenious system of fake keys and levers, the men engineer a breakout. ![]() Their status as civil rights activists makes them targets for particularly malicious brutality from the guards their lengthy sentences seem untenable. The two men (a third escapee, played by Mark Leonard Winter, is a fictionalised version of a real character) are incarcerated for distributing ANC material by leaflet bombs. The real-life jailbreak of apartheid-era political prisoners Tim Jenkin (Daniel Radcliffe) and Stephen Lee (Daniel Webber) is the inspiration for this taut thriller. ![]()
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