Long Night's Journey into Day

It’s been a long, bloody night for South Africa. With dawn breaking, an enterprising Truth and Reconciliation Committee was established for those seeking amnesty for crimes committed during the era of apartheid. This appropriately ambitious and ultimately successful documentary runs through four of the 7000 cases presented to the committee: two from each side of the bloody racial divide (an unrepresentative sample given that 80 percent of the amnesty seekers have been black).

In the process of truth telling, the victims’ families — and the film’s viewers — witness wrenching tales of truth and, in some cases, even more disturbingly insistent lies. Among the victims are Amy Biehl, the assassinated US Fulbright scholar, whose parents somehow find it in themselves to comfort her murderers’ mothers. The expert way directors Deborah Hoffman and Frances Reid juxtapose such emotional generosity with scenes of vicious, unjustifiable violence leaves you torn, cold, and effectively troubled.

-- Nina Willdorf