On 29 May we will be screening the award-winning movie Skin (2008) – a most compelling film based on the real-life story of Sandra Laing, a girl with dark skin born to white Afrikaner parents at the height of 1950s apartheid South Africa.

The film stars Sophie Okonedo (as Sandra), Alice Krige (as the mother), Sam Neill (as the father), and Tony Kgoroge (as Petrus). This film is a powerful portrayal of the cruelty of racial prejudice, and a family torn apart by the collective shadow of race and class in apartheid-era South Africa. It is based on the book written by Judith Stone, When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race.

The film explores Sandra’s early traumatic rejection and exile from her own family, and her search for belonging and identity, on her path toward individuation. We witness the choices she makes and the courage it takes to become her authentic self, rising above the shadow of collective racial prejudice and the ways in which these inherited complexes can imprison the soul.

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