Film

In a Time of Violence: The Line

Director

Brian Tilley

Year

1994

A story concerning changing values, violent cultural and political clashes and conflict among black families in Johannesburg, South Africa.

This controversial political thriller, which provoked mass demonstrations and nine deaths in South Africa when it was first shown, gives dramatic form to the African National Congress's basic program of reconcilliation within a non-racialist, democratic society. A train massacre by an Inkatha militant causes the sole witness to the crime to flee the Soweto townships to take refuge in Johannesburg; but the violence follows him when his ANC comrades try to buy guns for a retaliatory raid against Inkatha supporters.