February 14, 2007	Wednesday	Muharram 25, 1428

BERLIN: The 57th International Film Festival in Berlin has got off to a strong start with the South African film Goodbye Bafana on Nelson Mandela’s long incarceration emerging as an early front-runner for honours. In all 26 movies are chasing the top Golden Bear award.

With some 375 films showing in the various sections, and another 700 or so from around the world being bought and sold during the accompanying European Film Market there is plenty of colour and action to be seen in the German capital.

Following the Festival’s world premiere of La Vie En Rose depicting the often tormented life of legendary French singer Edith Piaf, it has been Danish director Bille August’s Goodbye Bafana which has grabbed most media headlines.

After its showing in the competition on Sunday, US actor Dennis Haysbert, who plays Mandela, was roundly cheered by some 500 journalists attending the post-film press conference.

Goodby Bafana tells the unvarnished story of the brutal apartheid regime of the Nationalist Party, and Mandela’s 27-year internment with his closest comrades, most of it spent on Robben Island.

Besides Haysbert, who cuts an impressive figure as the legendary Mandela, actor Joseph Fiennes as prison guard James Gregory, and Diane Kruger as Gregory’s wife, also give solid performances in the roles of initially racist white Afrikaners who slowly recognise the injustices and crimes of the white regime.

Answering questions, the North Carolina-born Haysbert, an active campaigner in the battle against AIDS, particularly in South Africa, said that for the role he “read everything about him I could lay my hands on, seen every DVD of his experiences and listened to every major speech he made.”

Haysbert said it had been daunting and intimidating to play “arguably one of the top human beings who ever set foot on this planet, and doing justice to him.”—Dawn/The IPS News Service