New Trailer for MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM

A new trailer has been released for Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, the upcoming Nelson Mandela biopic by The Weinstein Company. Directed by Justin Chadwick (The Other Boleyn Girl) and starring Idris Elba (Luther, Prometheus, Pacific Rim) as the titular peace activist, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom explores the topics mentioned in Mandela’s 1994 biography and premiered at the 2013 Toronto Film Festival. The second trailer released thus far for the film focuses less on the guerilla-warfare like protests of Mandela’s movement, instead zeroing in on the stark contrast between the life Mandela had and dreamed of for his family and the brutality of the Dutch South African regime.

We go from Elba’s voiceover as Mandela, embracing his wife (Naomie Harris) and opining on wanting them to walk free in their own land, to Molotov cocktails and the armored riot-control vehicles now ubiquitous to protests within the first minute. The tone shifts darker with Mandela addressing a packed movie theater imploring them that “we are the pople of this nation but we don’t have rights. There comes a time when there remains two choices: submit or fight!” superimposed with clips of the heavily armed shooting at the assembled South African protestors and the following chaos. The people cheer “fight” and march into the street with Mandela as the march continues with a montage of resistance and white goons coming after Mandela, intimidating his wife and chasing him into a road block, guns trained on him. Whisked away to a court room, Mandela is handed life in prison, and as his fingers disconnect from his wife’s, the new U2 song “Ordinary love” – the band’s first in three years, written for the film – plays as Mandela is brought into prison. The campaign to Free Nelson Mandela begins, and the montage continues into a happier tone, ending with Mandela walking with his wife and supporters and the line “Love comes more naturally to the human heart.”

Rife with topical imagery yet firmly anchored in the subject matter, this new trailer seems more restrained in it’s contemporary call-outs than the first trailer and drives home for fully the gravity of the oppression that Mandela fought against, which given the subject matter seems only fitting. Set for limited release in the US on November 29^th after doing a run of film-festival screenings including Chicago International Film Festival and Austin Film Festival, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom has as high aspirations for it’s reception as it’s subject matter warrants. Only time will tell if it will stand up to it’s equally weighty competition come Oscar season.

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is directed by Justin Chadwick and stars Idris Elba, Naomie Harris, Tony Kgoroge, Riaad Moosa, Jamie Bartlett, Lindiwe Matshhikiza, Terry Pheto and Deon Lotz. It hits theaters on November 29, 2013.