It is not the best film about South Africa but it has something to say and gives audiences worldwide an opportunity to see and hear something about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings.

The screenplay is based on a book by the journalist, Antjie Krog, Country of My Skull. She covered the hearings for the South African Broadcasting Corporation. Her story is also autobiographical fiction, a portrait of her Afrikaaner upbringing with its inherent dominance and prejudices, a picture of her marriage and an affair with a fellow journalist and the need for confession, honesty and reconciliation in her own life. She is played with her customary sensitivity and intensity by Juliette Binoche.

The American journalist is played by Samuel L. Jackson, a reporter for the Washington Post, who arrives in South Africa with a strong bias, even prejudice against whites and Afrikaaners, drawing on his own experience of American racist attitudes. He is outspoken and initially clashes with Anna and her African assistant. This gives the opportunity for the screenplay to dramatise the issues underlying apartheid and the Truth and Reconciliation hearings.

While the film gives a lot of its attention to the relationship between the two journalists, the back story in Washington has been cut (and can be seen in the deleted scenes on the DVD). This gives a priority to Anna’s story, her response to her family, to the hearings (including emotional breakdown) and to acceptance of guilt and responsibility. The affair seems dramatically contrived, although it actually happened. But, it gives the opportunity for Anna’s mother to reveal secrets from her own past and urge Anna to be truthful to her injured husband.

What makes the most impact, of course, is the work of the Commission itself. Several witnesses tell their harrowing stories of disappearances, of torture and of murders. Anna’s broadcasts lead to several further witnesses coming forward and giving information which leads to the pathos of recovered corpses and the knowledge of further murders.

There is also a dramatic motif throughout the film as the Washington journalist conducts a series of interviews with one of the police officers (Brendan Gleeson) who is unrepentant about the role he played and the torture and killings he administered. Other officers come forward during the hearings to testify that they were politically motivated and following orders thus enabling them to receive amnesty.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was based on the principle that all South Africans were interconnected and that forgiveness and atonement were more important than vengeance.

In My Country was directed in South African locations by John Boorman (Point Blank, Deliverance, Emerald Forest, Excalibur, Hope and Glory).

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