A political biopic should seek to provide intimate insight into a real human being. Their surge in popularity is arguably a reflection of society’s desire to see our political figures in real terms and thus avoid the tendency to label them as simply good or bad; wrong or right.
– Rebecca Lloyd, The New Statesman (2011)
The films analysed in this chapter focus on three contrasting politicians: Richard Nixon, Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela.
Certainly no one would argue that Richard Nixon is an important figure in American politics. Oliver Stone’s bio-pic, Nixon (1995), is a big sweeping epic, its fragmented narrative and visual style dominated by the performance of Anthony Hopkins as the tragic president. It was criticised for its length and for the final hour, focusing on the minutiae of the Watergate scandal. Here we will focus on Morgan and Howard’s Frost/Nixon (2008) which manages to combine both the importance of Nixon pre- and post-Watergate in a highly entertaining peek behind-the-scenes of the machinations of the infamous 1977 interview where Frost manages to an elicit an apology (of sorts) from Nixon.
Abraham Lincoln has been the subject of countless films, from presidential bio-pics such as
Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, 1939) to the action-adventurer in
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (Timur Bekmambetov, 2010) where he combines his full-time job as President, with the part-time one of vampire hunter. In 2012 Daniel Day-Lewis played him in a film version directed by Steven Speilberg.
Nelson Mandela has been hailed as the ‘Lincoln of Africa’. He was portrayed by Danny Glover in Mandela (1987) and since his election victory in 1994, by Sidney Poitier in Mandela and de Klerk (1997), Dennis Haysbert in Goodbye Bafana (2007), David Harewood in Mrs Mandela (2010), Morgan Freeman in Invictus (2009), Terrence Howard in Winnie Mandela (2011) and Idris Elba in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013). Here we will look at two of these, one which focuses on one year (Invictus) and the other that covers almost sixty years (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom).
Frost/Nixon (2008)
Director: Ron Howard
Screenwriter: Peter Morgan
Starring: Michael Sheen (David Frost) and Frank Langella (Richard Nixon)
Subject: American president Richard Nixon (Richard Milhous Nixon, 1913–1994) and English journalist David Frost (Sir David Paradine Frost, 1939–2013)
In 2008 Michael Sheen and Frank Langella reproduced their 2006 West End and Broadway stage performances on film for director Ron Howard, from Peter Morgan’s screenplay based on his play. It portrays Frost as a jet-setting lightweight TV personality whose career was in decline. This was ‘far from the truth’ says Frost who had interviewed prime ministers, presidents and religious leaders, and by 1977 had done over 4,000 interviews, including one in 1968 with Nixon (see Hoyle 2008).
With his political career over, low on funds and his memoirs about to be published, the film posits that Nixon’s publicist, Swifty Lazar (Toby Jones) felt that a series of television interviews would aid the book’s promotion, and sought payment for a series of interviews. The highest bid of $600,000 and a 20% share of the profits came from David Frost’s production company.
One of the film’s most problematic scenes from those seeking historical accuracy was the late-night telephone call a seemingly drunk Nixon makes to Frost in which he talks about ‘being looked down on’. This was a complete fabrication by Morgan. Jonathan Aitken, Nixon’s biographer says,
Those of us who were around at the time are united in our incredulity over three major historical flaws in the Hollywood version of the story. Without giving too much of the plot away, the most dramatic twist in the movie comes when Nixon makes an extraordinary and emotional late-night phone call to Frost. This phone call did not happen. Nixon’s weird rant about his personal motivations and social resentments, which purportedly gave Frost new clues to hidden secrets about the Watergate cover-up, is, from start to finish, an artistic invention by the scriptwriter Peter Morgan. He uses this dramatic device as the turning-point which gave a demoralised Frost fresh hope and adrenaline, firing up his psyche so that he became transformed into a pugnacious interrogator whose brutal line of questioning ultimately broke the former President. (2009)
Morgan explains its inclusion:
Do I think the phone call between David Frost and Richard Nixon is truthful? Absolutely. Is it accurate? Absolutely not. Did it happen? No. Could it have happened? Yes. In that scene we find out why David Frost is as ambitions as he is and why Richard Nixon is as ambitious as he is. It asks what the difference between these two men are, what deceives them, what haunts them, what makes them human. (Quoted in Teeman 2009)
Author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, Rick Perlstein said:
The film conveys the poetic truth of who Nixon was magnificently. They got his shambling physical awkwardness, which he learned to overcome when the camera was on. The scene where he has the phone conversation with Frost in the hotel late at night quite splendidly captures his political identity, and his ability to reach out to people by speaking to the common condition of being condescended to. (2009)
Frank Langella as Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon (2008)
Although he agreed to do the interviews, and was being paid, Nixon managed to stonewall many of Frost’s questions or give long meaningless answers. There was 29 hours of filmed material, which were transmitted in summer 1977 as four ninety-minute programmes watched by 45 million people. The real answer to Frost’s three questions at the end is closer to twenty minutes in reality, and does not end with the signature ‘shattered man’ close-up as portrayed by Frank Langella. Howard applied a similar shooting and editing sensibility to the interviews as he had done to the boxing sequences in Cinderella Man (2005).
Critics have complained that Peter Morgan has oversimplified the story. But in researching the play, he interviewed everyone involved and they all had different story to tell. He does, naturally edit the interview for dramatic effect: ‘There’s 10 or 12% of fiction in these, one or two bits of which I could do without’ Frost remarked; he described it as ‘brilliant’, however he regrets that ‘to build up the underdog thing’ Peter Morgan downplayed his distinguished TV career (quoted in Hoyle 2008).
Other script changes for dramatic purposes were a re-ordering of the interview topics, those covering Watergate were days 8 and 9 (of 12). Unlike the film, where researchers’ discover at the last minute Nixon’s conversations with Charles Colson, Special Counsel to President Nixon from 1969 to 1973, known as his ‘Hatchet Man’, this fact had been known for eight months and were not considered to be as significant as the film implies.
The film was released in December 2008 to good reviews. It took $27 million world-wide; its budget was $25 million.
The film’s authorial voice is once again Peter Morgan’s:
It’s hard to argue that Howard brings anything new to Morgan’s play. Perhaps his biggest achievement is to preserve the fine performances of Michael Sheen and Frank Langella, who both starred in the original London theatre production. What the director of Apollo 13 and Cinderella Man does find in Morgan’s typically bold and witty script is an energetic sports movie, with an underdog, Frost, who flounders for three quarters before triumphing in the fourth, along the way indulging in sweaty close-ups, ample pep talks and an extended training period. (Calhoun 2009)
Michael Sheen, unsurpringly, received much acclaim, and captured the swooping vocals of Frost so familiar to UK audiences:
Michael Sheen, Britain’s smartest chameleon, has a feel for the torn edges of loudmouths—his Kenneth Williams was caustic and brittle, his Tony Blair quick witted and edgy, and we can but greedily anticipate his forthcoming stint as egocentric football whiz Brian Clough for The Damned United. As Frost, Sheen gives first the camp exterior then the moral voice mustering its strength like Hulk ready to rip through his silk shirts. It’s a magnificent announcement of a performance—a pitch-perfect impression and a layered character, a hero spotted with vanity. His battle with Nixon made Frost a world player; its fictional counterpart could make Sheen our finest export. (Nathan 2009: 62)
In the US, it was Frank Langella that was fêted. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Frank Langella for Best Actor, but failed to win in any category.
Lincoln (2012)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriter: Tony Kushner
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis (Abraham Lincoln) and Sally Field (Mary Todd Lincoln)
Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln (2012)
Subject: American President, Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
Lincoln is based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005), which Spielberg had optioned in 2001.
In 2005, John Logan was hired to write a script based around Lincoln’s friendship with African-American social reformer Frederick Douglass. In January 2006, playwright Paul Webb was brought in to re-work this script, widening the narrative scope to cover a wider period of Lincoln’s life, and Liam Neeson was cast as Lincoln. Over the next five years Spielberg continued to work on the film, now with Tony Kusher, to find a cinematic way into Lincoln’s work and life. Kusher’s 2009 script focused on the final four months of Lincoln’s life in early 1865, when he was trying to have the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution passed by the United States House of Representatives. The Thirteenth Amendment would see slavery and involuntary servitude abolished except as punishment for a crime. It was this approach that would be filmed. Neeson, by this point, felt he was too old to play Lincoln, and in November 2010, Day-Lewis was cast.
The film covers the period from January to April 1865. It opens on the battlefields of the Civil War amidst its bloody hand-to-hand combat; this segues to two black soldiers recounting their experiences to an unknown superior. The camera pulls back to reveal that they are addressing Lincoln, visiting the front line in January 1896. This Lincoln is world-weary, but clearly still dedicated to seeing a swift end to the war. He believes that the Civil War is drawing to a conclusion, and that his Emancipation Proclamation drawn up in 1863 may be disregarded in some states, and that freed slaves will be returned to slavery. The narrative of
Lincoln follows the next four months as he negotiates with both parties to get the Thirteen Amendment passed. This would be his final act, as he was assassinated at the Ford Theatre in April 1865.
By using this momentous period of world history as the basis, the filmmakers extrapolate wider issues of Lincoln’s political machinations and character – and those who surround him. Day-Lewis portrays Lincoln with dignity and gravitas, but with an underlying thread of humour which makes him human: he has his speech under his hat, gives him youngest son Tad (Gulliver McGrath) piggy-back-rides and forgets his slippers. Spielberg said:
I didn’t want to make a movie about a statue. I wanted him to be flesh and bone – to see the President’s thought processes. You get to exist with him, for long moments where nothing is said. He spent a lot of time in the deeps. Sometimes the deeps were cold. Other times, there were in retreat. (Quoted in Shone 2013)
The film ends with a flashback, with Lincoln delivering his second inaugural address (March 1865). With victory and the end of the Civil War in sight, he speaks of the sadness which saw the country ripped apart. He calls for peace, declares that this war would have no victors and speaks of the unmistakable evil of slavery, little realising that in the crowd are the men who would plot and carry out his assassination a month later.
The film opened in November 2012 to universal critical acclaim. Its budget of $65 million was quickly recouped as it took over $275 million world-wide. Both the film and its actors were nominated for major awards, with Day-Lewis collecting 21 acting awards.
In a towering performance, Day-Lewis encompasses the great statesman who shaped history, the intimate man of the people and the mysterious, charismatic figure. (French 2013)
Harold Holzer, co-chair of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation was a consultant on the film; he acknowledged that there some small historical inaccuracies: Mary Lincoln would never have visited the House of Representatives, Lincoln would never have retrieved his speech from the lining of his top hat, nor would anyone have been able to recite the words of the Gettysburg Address. But ends by saying, ‘There is no doubt that Spielberg has travelled toward an understanding of Abraham Lincoln more boldly than any other filmmaker before him’ (2012).
Allen Guelzo, a professor of the Civil War era, stated that
the film was 90 percent on the mark, which given the way Hollywood usually does history is saying something. I thought that it got with reasonable accuracy a lot of Lincoln’s character, the characters of the main protagonists, and the overall debate over the Thirteenth Amendment. The acting and screenwriting were especially well done. I remember thinking afterwards that all the time I’d been watching the movie I had never thought that Daniel Day-Lewis was acting, because what he portrayed seemed so close to my own mental image of what Lincoln must have been like. (Quoted in Mackaman 2013)
Invictus (2009)
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: Anthony Peckham
Starring: Morgan Freeman (Nelson Mandela) and Matt Damon (Francois Pienaar)
[and]
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013)
Director: Justin Chadwick
Screenwriter: William Nicholson
Starring: Idris Elba (Nelson Mandela) and Naomie Harris (Winnie Mandela)
Subject: South African President Nelson Mandela (Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela 1918–2014)
Invictus is based on John Carlin’s non-fiction book
Playing the Enemy: Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation (2008). He met Freeman (who bought the rights to the book) through a friend and pitched him the idea. Carlin started with, ‘I have a movie for you. It’s based on a book I am writing about an event that distils the essence of the South African miracle.’ Before Carlin could go further Freeman responded ‘Oh, you mean the rugby game?’ (2010). He had wanted to play Mandela for several years, as he knew and admired him, and was aware of Carlin’s work-in-progress. Freeman had bought the rights to Mandela’s autobiography,
Long Walk to Freedom, but no screenwriter had managed to shape a screenplay from the vast material. In the summer of 2007, Freeman, with Carlin’s book in hand, went to Clint Eastwood with the idea for the film. Eastwood called Matt Damon who signed up right away. Eighteen months later, filming began in South Africa in March 2009 and it ended on May.
Eastwood said, ‘I love the fact that the story is concise, that you don’t have to go back and see him as a young man, the thing with Winnie, and all that stuff’ (ibid.). Indeed, rather than a straight bio-pic, it is a powerful film about the power of sports and national pride. It also follows the familiar sport-film narrative of the underdog made good. At the film’s outset the Springboks are portrayed as a failing team with little hope of succeeding in the 1995 Rugby World Cup they are about to host. Francois Pienaar is captain of an unfit team, boycotted internationally for years, frequently facing humiliation.
Ed Griffiths, Chief Executive of the South African Rugby Union and communication director of the South African team during the 1995 World Cup stated:
Invictus does accurately reflect the spirit of that tournament, and I know because I was there every day. … It was a month that seemed surreal – because a country that had been so divided did come together. It might sound sugary to suggest that, but for that month it absolutely did. But the idea that the World Cup was part of some preconceived grand plan for the Rainbow Nation – which is the central theme of the movie – is just not accurate. There was no grand plan. It just happened. Call it destiny. It was a spontaneous result of a number of special people, most prominent of whom were Mandela and Pienaar, coming together in an event that prompted extraordinary emotions around South Africa and indeed around the rugby world. There is no question that Mandela saw in the World Cup an opportunity to bring the country together and he held the country to it brilliantly. (2010)
What he disputes is that Mandela and Pienaar met and planned this.
The film follows a familiar trajectory. It opens with a prologue of Mandela’s release from prison in 1990. As he is driven from the prison, he passes by a long fence; on one side of the road, young black children are playing football on a lumpy wasteland, on the other privileged white South Africans are playing rugby on manicured grounds. The rugby coach turns to one of this young players and says, ‘this is the day our country went to the dogs’, highlighting the engrained hatred and fear some white South Africans held for black South Africans. With precision and clarity, Eastwood effectively laid the touch-stone for the film’s main themes: social division and fear. This opening scene exemplifies the nation’s apartheid, and established sporting preferences: white South Africans’ love of rugby and black South Africans’ for football. Indeed, when it came to rugby, the black South Africans would support any team other than the Springboks.
Through a montage of archive footage we see a South Africa divided, fuelled by violence and hatred, which segues to Mandela giving a speech calling for unification. In 1994, the polls open for all South Africans, and Mandela is voted in as President.
Once inaugurated he sets about dismantling the legacy of apartheid. Tackling institutionalised racism (from both black and white South Africans) he gives a moving speech on his first day in office. He sees an opportunity to unify further when at a rugby match he sees and recalls that black South Africans are cheering not for the Springboks, but for the other team. He meets with Francois Pienaar, the captain of the South Africa rugby union team, and inspires him to work towards winning the World Cup that they will be hosting. There follows a series of training sequences and PR exercises as the ‘hated’ Springboks go out into the townships to coach the children. Meanwhile, Mandela makes public his support for them.
Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in Invictus (2009)
The narrative structure and message is simple. We forget that we are watching history; sport is the catalyst/backdrop to a much larger drama. Yet the political and social importance of this moment in history reflects the wider issues of the black majority’s yearning for revenge and the fear the white minority has of retaliation. Mandela’s desire for reconciliation is resolute and his actions here resonate. Mandela understood that the way to beat one’s enemy is not to destroy them but to win them over.
The film does not use any flashbacks to show Mandela’s or South Africa’s recent past. Nor does it touch on Mandela’s marital concerns which were being made public at this time. The only visual reference to Mandela’s incarceration is a sequence when the Springboks go to the Robben Island prison. Pienaar, affected by the visit, imagines Mandela there. In a fantasy sequence he sees a ghost-like image of Mandela in the cell, out in the yard smashing rocks, while a voiceover narrates the nineteenth-century poem ‘Invictus’ (Latin for ‘invincible’), that Mandela had given to Pienaar as inspiration. In reality Pienaar was given a copy of the ‘The Man in the Arena’ passage from President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt’s speech, ‘Citizenship in a Republic’.
John Carlin, on whose book, the film was based, said, ‘The first time I saw the film, having been terrified that they’d fuck it up, I just sat there as the credits rolled with a lump in my throat. I’ve never felt so proud in my life’ (quoted in Cohen 2010). Yet Carlin had received some criticism. Leftwing journalist John Pilger felt that he essentially written a hagiography to which Carlin responded: ‘It’s difficult not to do a hagiography. Mandela is to politics what Mozart is to music. He is the Abraham Lincoln of our times. And the great good fortune of my working life has been to know him. I’m telling his story, all that I can do is to be honest’ (ibid.).
Freeman delivers an understated performance which catches the dignity, wit, wisdom and cheekiness one associates with the elder statesman, a performance for which he was nominated for many acting awards.
Invictus was not as big a hit in the US as it was overseas. Its budget was $60 million, and it took $37.5 million in the US, and almost $85 million internationally.
Politically significant true-life story? Check. Triumph over adversity? Check. Wrongs righted? Craggy old man in role of a lifetime? Directed by US national treasure? Sport as metaphor? Checkity, check check. What could be more high-fivingly all-American? Well, perhaps, that it’s centred on the 1995 Rugby World Cup – a sport even more unpopular in the US than ‘soccer’. (DG 2010: 41)
Three years later, director Justin Chadwick, producers Anant Singh and David Thompson, with screenwriter William Nicholson finally brought the long anticipated ‘official’ version of Mandela’s autobiography, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, to the screen. It serves as a prequel, of sorts, to Invictus, as it ends at the point of his election, and traces his journey from childhood, his years as an apolitical/womanising lawyer, his abandonment of his first wife and child, his relationship with his second wife Winnie, his growing involvement in the ANC, his arrest and trial, his 27-year incarceration on Robben Island and negotiations for release.
Eschewing approaches from major American studios, Mandela finally placed his trust in a British/South African co-production. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2013; it opened in South Africa and on a limited released in the US on 28 November. It had its UK premiere on 5 December 2013 at a Royal Gala Performance in the presence of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Mandela’s daughters Zindzi and Zenani. Whilst the film was being shown, news reached them of Mandela’s death. During the closing credits, producer Anant Singh and actor Idris Elba took to the stage and informed the audience that Mandela had died. Prince William made a brief statement to the press as he left the screening: ‘I just wanted to say it’s extremely sad and tragic news. We were just reminded what an extraordinary and inspiring man Nelson Mandela was. My thoughts and prayers are with him and his family right now.’
In the intervening month before its UK release, there had been much speculation and anticipation regarding the film’s critical, box office and awards success. This official/endorsed film surely must be a fitting final tribute to a man who made such an impact on his own country, and as an international statesman and diplomat. The film opened in the UK on 3 January 2014. There was praise for Elba’s performance, but the reviews were ‘average’. The film’s structure and narrative drive to tell the whole story offers a by-the-numbers, ‘greatest-hits’ narrative. The filmmakers obvious reverence for the subject matter pours forth, yet it does not shy away from the darker, earlier years. The compression of the 27 years of incarceration, and the underdevelopment of characters that surround him, left audiences under-whelmed. Yet this is Mandela’s story, using his autobiography as its primary source, so any criticism of historical inaccuracy or bias, should be levelled at the autobiography and the reluctance of the film to offer contradictory views.
Idris Elba as Nelson Mandela in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013)
The film opens with an older Mandela reciting a dream and saying ‘they never see me’. The narration continues as we return to a prologue of his childhood (he is played here by Sizi Pini) in the honey-hued Xhosa region, and a tribal ritual of young men (now played by Atandwa Kani) saying goodbye to their childhood and he is given the name ‘troublemaker’. He says, ‘I didn’t want to make too much trouble, [just] make my family proud.’ The story then moves to 1942, Johannesburg, where Mandela (now played by Idris Elba) is a young lawyer making a name for himself. The death of a friend in police custody sparks a desire to agitate for reform. Incensed by the increased military presence and segregation in the townships, he starts giving speeches in support of the African National Congres (ANC). He also becomes violent towards his wife, who subsequently leaves him. He then meets and gets engaged to Winnie. In 1960 at a demonstration in Sharpeville where black South Africans were burning passports in defiance of new regulations, soldiers start shooting at the crowd and hundreds are injured and killed. It is this event that forces him to become more radical and go underground, as the movement becomes increasingly violent. He and his associates are captured and put on trial in Pretoria in 1963. Not wishing them to become martyrs they are given life imprisonment and are sent to Robben Island in July 1964.
At this point we see scenes that would have been beyond Mandela’s point of view. Winnie visits and tells him of her arrests, which we are shown, and see her increasingly politicised by the violence and persecution mounted upon her. The film does show some of the violence meted upon Winnie whilst being interrogated and her growing extreme political activism (at odds with that of Mandela) but it does not dwell on this, or her affairs. This was covered effectively in the BBC film Mrs Mandela with Sophie Okonedo (Michael Samuels, 2010), which shows Winnie Mandela’s transformation from a shy country girl in her twenties to a head-strong woman in her fifties. This thoughtful drama does not excuse her for her later criminal activities, but does offer an explanation for it. Darrell Roodt with Jennifer Hudson in Winnie (2011) does shy away from fully exploring Winnie as war criminal, but offers very graphic depictions of the violence of the riots meted on the black South Africans which triggers her extremism.
We see more of life outside of Mandela’s purview as archive footage of the anti-apartheid movement becomes greater, world leaders speaking out against South Africa’s segregation; there are trade restrictions, a ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ campaign is launched, and a concert planned to coincide with his seventieth birthday. These lead to secret negotiations on Mandela’s release and on 11 February 1990 he is set free, with Winnie at his side. It soon becomes apparent that their politics have diverged and he says, ‘I love her as she was, not how she has become.’ The film ends with his election in April 1994. The framing device of the dream returns and the voice-over ends by saying, ‘learn to love, taught to love’.
The budget was $35 million with the film taking $27 million box office on its theatrical release. The reviews were concerned about the apparent reverence of the piece.
Unless a filmmaker opts for the impressionistic approach, the best this genre can hope for is a
Reader’s Digest abridgement, a pulped and potted novelisation. Luckily it has Elba, who can convey in one loaded look several pages’ worth of pathos, inner conflict, stoicism or resolve. (Gilbey 2014)
Let the words ‘Cry freedom’ ring across the world. Freedom from political cruelty and oppression. But freedom too, please, from hagiographical stinkers like Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Stinkers that smell no better because they have an earnest, honourable, bleeding-heart subject. Poor Nelson Mandela. Barely in the ground and one more giant clod of well-meant, pious banality is thrown on his memory. Couldn’t we have had some controversy-stirring candour about this true-life hero in his early terrorist phase? British actor Idris Elba expends his skills on painstaking vocal mimicry, leaving none for emotion, spontaneity or a simulation of intellectual vitality. (Andrews 2014)
Further viewing
Amazing Grace (Michael Apted, 2006); William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd)
The Butler (Lee Daniels, 2013); Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker)
César Chávez (Diego Luna, 2014); César Chávez (Michael Peña)
Che, parts 1 and 2 (Steven Soderbergh, 2008); Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara (Benicio Del Toro)
Downfall (Olivier Hirschbiegel, 2004); Adolf Hitler (Bruno Ganz)
Evita (Alan Parker, 1996); Eva Peron (Madonna)
The Iron Lady (Phyllida Lloyd, 2012); Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep)
J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood, 2011); J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio)
The Last King of Scotland (Kevin MacDonald, 2006); Idi Amin (Forrest Whittaker)
Milk (Gus Van Sant, 2009); Harvey Milk (Sean Penn)
The Motorcycle Diaries (Walter Salles, 2004); Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara (Gael Garcia Bernal)
Mrs Mandela (Michael Samuels, 2010); Winnie Mandela (Sophie Okonedo) and Nelson Mandela (David Harewood)
Nixon (Oliver Stone, 1995); Richard Nixon (Anthony Hopkins)
W (Oliver Stone, 2008); George Bush (Josh Brolin)
Winnie (Darrell Roodt, 2011); Winnie Mandela (Jennifer Hudson) and Nelson (Terrence Howard)
