World Premiere

Hollywood Reporter

By Michael Rechtshaffen

Oct 2, 2008

Toronto International Film Festival

But the fact that it’s actually based on a true story adds an extra layer of poignancy, heightened further by another superb Sophie Okonedo performance.

A first feature by San Francisco-born Anthony Fabian, this UK-South African co-production was still up for grabs at the end of the Toronto International Film Festival.

For Okonedo’s Sandra Laing, the fact that she didn’t share a similar complexion to that of her parents and older brother (on her birth certificate she’s classified as white) only really becomes an issue when she attends an all-white girls’ school.

When the administration finds a lame excuse to expel her, her rigid biological father, Abraham (a rigid Sam Neill) takes on the government in a bid to prove her “whiteness”, but his tireless fight seems to have more to do with his discomfort with her perceived ethnicity than to uphold his daughter’s civil rights.

Things between them reach point of no return when Sandra finds herself attracted to a young black man rather than the sorry assortment of white guys he chooses for her as potential suitors, with Abraham effectively disowning her and forbidding her mother (a sympathetic Alice Krige) from communicating with her.

Taking a straight-ahead, safely linear approach to the story-telling, writer-director Fabian’s heartfelt attentions occasionally flirt with melodrama, but those honest, unaffected portrayals — especially Okonedo’s thoroughly believable two-decade age span — ultimately keep the picture on the right emotional track.

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Variety.com

By DENNIS HARVEY

Framed by sequences set on South Africa’s first day of racially nonexclusive free elections in 1994, the otherwise chronological narrative starts in earnest three decades earlier. Ten-year-old Sandra (Ella Ramangwane) has been raised so far in rural isolation by her shopkeeper parents Abraham (Neill) and Sannie (Krige), with no real perception that she’s any different from them or from older brother Leon (Hannes Brummer).

But when she’s dropped off for the first time at boarding school, it’s immediately apparent that everyone else thinks she’s quite different indeed. “I’m not black!” she protests in all sincerity to a dormmate trying to demonstrate open-mindedness. Others, staff included, express their racial attitudes more cruelly.

At last expelled for fighting back against a viciously abusive teacher, Sandra is escorted home by police as if she were a public menace. Such treatment enrages Abraham, who fights for her reclassification as white all the way to the Supreme Court. There, a geneticist argues convincingly (if offensively to many) that, as a result of South Africa’s long colonialist history, most Afrikaners probably have some “colored” blood in them.

Abraham’s relentless, angry pursuit of such justice unfortunately has little impact on the prejudices of others, which ensure Sandra remains unacceptable in Afrikaner society. As she matures (now played by Okonedo), her prospects of marrying or even dating whites are near-nil, though the Laings won’t entertain any other option. Their overreaction when she’s discovered sneaking off to see black produce-seller Petrus (Tony Kgoroge) only makes things worse, finally severing all relations once Sandra moves in with Petrus to bear his child.

Conventionally well-crafted feature counts on the story itself rather than any notable stylistic gambits to carry the day. Evenhanded approach might strike some as a bit unimaginative, but it serves to downplay potential melodramatics inherent in some charged situations. Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda and concurrent Toronto preem The Secret Life of Bees) is well matched by newcomer Ramangwane as the protag’s younger self. Neill is fine as the self-defeatingly rigid father, Krige moving as a woman whose warm maternal instincts battle against her own ingrained sense of racial propriety.

Design contributions are well-turned, tech aspects solidly pro.

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ScreenDaily.com

Skin
Mike Goodridge in Los Angeles
13 Oct 2008 14:17

Dir: Anthony Fabian. 2008. UK/South Africa. 107 mins.

Telling the extraordinary true story of Sandra Laing, a woman born black to white parents in 1955 South Africa, Skin is a moving film which illustrates the impact of apartheid on a single family unit.

Boasting a measured and harrowing central performance from Sophie Okonedo, it bypasses the thunderous rage and violent struggle of apartheid stories like Catch A Fire or Cry Freedom, instead quietly focusing on notions of identity and family ties as they affect one individual. Her anguish lingers long after the end credits roll.

Stories set in South Africa have proved an audience turn-off in recent years — from Catch A Fire to Red Dust, Country Of My Skull and Goodbye Bafana. Perhaps these sputtered out under the weight of their own moral indignation, but, in telling a small story of a family torn apart, Skin might prove more successful with specialised distributors and capture a contemporary audience which can relate more readily to the mother-daughter separation it portrays. Women in particular will respond to the two strong female characters and the emotional strain under which their relationship is placed. A proven tearjerker at Toronto and other festivals it has played, Skin could also end up winning awards kudos for Okonedo.

Ella Ramangwane plays young Sandra, whose parents Abraham (Neill) and Sannie (Krige) are white Afrikaner shopkeepers in a remote area in the eastern Transvaal. Rigid followers of the apartheid system, they have brought Sandra up as a white girl even though it is clear to all around that her skin is black.

When she is thrown out of the boarding school to which they send her, Abraham pursues a campaign to have her reinstated but state officials promptly reclassify her as “coloured” and have her expelled. Enlisting the press, a case is that made a throwback gene — some black lineage in her parents’ ancestry — is responsible for her skin colour and she is reclassified “white”.

An accomplished narrative feature debut for UK documentary film-maker Anthony Fabian, Skin follows Laing’s story with an admirable restraint, never sliding into the melodrama which the true story could invite. The film also shows some of the disturbing mechanics of apartheid — a schoolteacher describing how whites and blacks are different, a waiting room where blacks aren’t allowed to take a seat.

While Okonedo dominates proceedings with an unshowy performance as Sandra, she is ably supported by Neill and Krige as her parents. Krige, who was born in South Africa herself, particularly meets the challenges of a juicy part as the mother torn between her loyalty to her husband and her maternal bonds to Sandra.

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Toronto Star

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Toronto Metro

But when the adult Laing (played by Sophie Okonedo) falls in love with a black man, the family’s racist wrath bursts forth. Sandra Laing grew up in an almost schizophrenic environment.

This is a powerful movie. See it — but go prepared. — Steve Veale/for Metro Toronto

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BBC World Service Talking Movies programme

Skin Sophie Okonedo plays a black girl born to white parents in a true tale of apartheid South Africa

See the BBC report

Sandra Laing may have been born to white parents but she’s believed to be a case of genetic throwback. This means that somewhere in her family tree, possibly decades beforehand, she may have had black ancestor.

“There are many, many documented cases of what is called genetic throwback,” explains director Anthony Fabian, “which is to say that somewhere in the ancestry of these white parents they was black blood. In a case like this you’d have to have two parents who each contribute enough black genes to make a child look distinctly African. And that’s what happened.”

Sandra’s Afrikaner parents, members of the racist National Party, perhaps out of denial, viewed her as white. Even Sandra who as a young girl, lived in a very isolated area, saw herself as white. British actress Sophie Okonedo plays Sandra Laing.

“She actually thinks she’s white,” explains the actress. “It isn’t ’til she goes to school that that her identity reflects in other people, other people don’t see her as white. Basically, they see her as coloured or black and so they react. She can’t understand why people are reacting to her.”

The film shows the psychic toll of racism on Sandra and her family. The director views the film as a family drama but he also sees his picture as a very effective way of showing the irrationality of racism in South Africa at the time.

“I think Skin is a wonderful example of the absurdities of racial definition,” he says. “Because if you could have a black child born to white parents, what can it possibly mean to be either white or black? You can’t then create an entire social system based on race, it just doesn’t make any sense. So it just puts the whole question of race on its head. And it’s a great illustration of that.”

Laing’s story has been told before, though not through a feature film. She’s not a woman of many words. Overall her view on the film is that personally it’s been therapeutic.

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IndependentFilmsDirect.com

Sandra Laing was born a black-skinned girl in Apartheid South Africa.

But her parents were White. And not adoptive parents — but her actual biological parents. And though her pigments and kinky dark hair made it unmistakable that Sandra’s genetic code contained Black genes both White parents claimed to know of no Black ancestors in their family tree.

Skin, which has its US Premiere today at the AFI Fest 2008 in Los Angeles, is the true story of Sandra Laing, a Black girl with White parents living under South African Apartheid — a griping film drama about personal identity and the emotional terror inflicted on humans by humans simply because they are different.

Sandra’s Afrikaner parents raised her to be “White.” As a girl Sandra described herself to others as “White,” and because her family deliberately set up its home in a remote village away from South Africa’s urban population centers, the young Black girl was able to enjoy an early childhood free of most prejudices experienced by other Black children in a country ruled by state-sanctioned racism set up by the ruling imperialistic British empire. Even the Blacks who worked for Sandra’s White parents referred to the girl as “White.”

But when it came time to go to school with other Afrikaner children things turn ugly quickly. Sandra is quickly expelled from the Whites-only school due to pressure from other parents. Sandra’s parents loudly protest because their daughter’s own birth certificate lists the girl’s race as “White.” It isn’t long after the school expulsion that local government officials reclassify Sandra as “Black” and that reclassification brings with it all the legalized prejudice and institutionalized indignity that comes with being Black in South Africa during Apartheid.

Sandra’s parents are warned by the local government that if they continue to protest publicly that their daughter might be removed from their home. In order not to lose their daughter, the parents accept the government’s reclassification. It’s interesting that Sandra’s parents — Sannie and Abraham Laing — are racist themselves. Both parents, but particularly Abraham — seem to believe in the Apartheid system, and in one scene Abraham, who is a shopkeeper, forces a black man to put coins on the store’s counter so he can avoid actually having to touch the skin of a Black man.

The Laings are unflinching in their belief that their daughter is truly “White,” just a victim of some unusual genetics. Abraham grows visibly upset when anyone suggests that a daughter of his could possibly be Black. To appease White officials who believe that Sannie or Abraham might be hiding a sexual affair or a Black relative in their ancestry, a South African geneticist testifies, amidst loud murmurs from a White courtroom audience, that 95% of Afrikaners are carriers of “Black” genes.

One of the film’s many terrific qualities is that nothing is simply black and white and the movie’s characters are fully dimensional people. Yes, Abraham has racist views that are totally indefensible, but part of his motivation is to protect his daughter because he knows the suffering that would be in store for Sandra as a Black in Apartheid-era South Africa.

The problems in the Laing household become insurmountable when Sandra reaches womanhood and begins to yearn for a romantic relationship. The film depicts disastrous dates she has with several white boys. Yet the parents forbid her from dating “Colored” men.

It seems inevitable to the viewer that Sandra will fall in love with a Black man. And when it happens, and she and her beloved undertake a covert affair, it’s only a matter of time before the ticking time bomb in the Laing household explodes.

And it does explode. The parents throw Sandra out. Sandra’s mother is certainly more compassionate than is Abraham, and the father disowns his daughter. She moves out of the White world into a shack in a “Colored” village of Apartheid South Africa.

And there Sandra is happy, at least for a brief time. But she misses, and writes letters to her mother. Sandra has a baby. But her husband is deeply bitter, and he has a drinking problem, and he thinks that Sandra is reluctant to truly let go of her White life.

Skin director Anthony Fabian first learned about Sandra Laing in 2000 when he heard a BBC report about Sandra and her story. “I was very compelled by the story and moved by it and angered by it and it was very clear to me from the beginning that there was a movie in it,” Fabian said. “It had epic scale and at the same time was very intimate. I like stories that have a small intimate heart but are set against a larger canvas.”

“I felt a great injustice had been done to her and that some reparations needed to be done for her and my way of doing that was telling this story,” Fabian said.

Skin director Anthony Fabian

At the core of the film is the issue of identity. What makes us who we are? What factors influence our concepts of self? These are not easy questions to answer. And this fine movie makes no attempt to provide easy answers, but artfully demonstrates the human drama involved in the questions, and how the drama can become a tragedy when Racism is one of the story’s components.

Fabian, who was born in San Francisco and lived part of his childhood in Mexico, went to boarding school in England, and then returned to America at age 17 to attend UCLA. His parents divorced and his mother lives in LA and his father is now in London. After working in Hollywood for several years, Fabian decided to return to England in the late 1980s because he wanted to make more personal art films and the Sundance era of the modern US independent film movement had not really begun. Fabian now has duel citizenship in the United States and UK.

“Going back to England recharged my creative batteries,” Fabian, age 43, said.

But with all his moving about as a boy, Fabian felt drawn to a film like Skin that is about personal identity.

“It asked a very simple universal question — ’Who am I, and where do I belong?’ — and this is a question that we all ask ourselves,” Fabian said.

Sandra’s husband leaves her because she’s too White. Her parents left her because she was too Black. Sandra moves to Johannesburg with her two children (both of whom have Black skin). Decades pass, and the silence between parents and daughter continues and the emotional rifts continue to fester.

The real Sandra Laing as a girl, poses with her parents

In the film’s final act, apartheid rule nears its end. The first open election in which Nelson Mandela will become South Africa’s first Black president nears. But as Sandra tells TV cameras, these revolutionary events, “Happened too late for me.”

Skin is an extraordinary movie that respects the complexity of the issues involved. Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) is riveting as the teenage and adult Sandra Laing, and Alice Krige and Sam Neill deliver first-class performances as Sandra’s parents Sannie and Abraham.

Sandra experienced rejection on so many levels, but to be rejected by one’s own parents may be the deepest cut of all.

“We all want the love and acceptance of our parents and in this case it was conditional, based on circumstances that were completely outside Sandra’s control,” Fabian said. “You want your parents’ acceptance and at the same time need to assert who you are.”

Fabian had never been to South Africa before traveling there to meet and talk with the real Sandra Laing about the possibility of the film. They have become close friends during the years it has taken to shepherd the story to the big screen.

“We’ve been through a lot together over the years. She’s had to be very patient in terms of getting the film out,” Fabian said. Before the film was made, Fabian helped Sandra negotiate a fee paid to Sandra, monies for the rights to her life story in respect to a book written about her — a sum of money that allowed Sandra to buy a house and open a business (a neighborhood shop not unlike her father’s) in South Africa.

“Sandra is a very fragile and damaged person. She’s very shy. She doesn’t like to look you in the eye,” Fabian said. “But telling her story has been a huge source of therapy for her. It’s been enormously cathartic.” Laing was born in 1955 and is now in her early 50s.

“She’s much stronger for having gone through all of this. She wants to share it,” Fabian continued. “She says she’s glad that people can see what apartheid did to people and that it must never happen again.”

Black audience members who have seen the film around the World are quick to remind Fabian that the struggles are not over.

“The black audience says ’We’re still experiencing this in our own way. We’re still forced to suffer — don’t be fooled, the lighter your skin is the more success you’ll have,’” Fabian said.

Skin has its US premiere on the day before Americans go to the polls and might possibly elect the first African-American president in USA history. Fabian sees a bit of irony in the fact that Sandra Laing was punished for being bi-racial, but that America could elect a bi-racial president, but the political race frames Obama more as a Black American than a part-White American.

“First of all, Obama is always referred to as a Black candidate. He is bi-racial and is as much White as he is Black. It’s almost an exact parallel between Sandra’s story. He must have experienced the similar feelings of being an outsider,” Fabian said.

The South African government has requested a special screening of Skin before the country’s Parliament on November 14. Sandra Laing has been invited to the screening as a guest of honor.

“Apartheid did end and people did reconcile, but at the same time it’s important never to forget,” Fabian said.

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Screencrave.com

SKIN — AFI Review

Los Angeles, November 3rd 2008.

Skin, by first-time director Anthony Fabian, tells the true story of Sandra Laing (played by Sophie Okonedo), a woman of mixed race born to white Afrikaner parents during Apartheid in 1955.

Director Fabian’s debut is focused, well crafted, and free of sermons. The film’s honeyed, warm palette is uncomplicated, deferring to a breakout performance from star Okonedo, who physically inhabits Sandra. Perpetually aware of the violence she inspires, terrified to speak above a whisper, she is nonetheless determined to assert her place in a fractured society that insists on choosing for her.

And to understand Sandra Laing is to recognize the greater impact of her mere existence: a single person as living proof of the hypocrisy, the impossibility, of racial division. We are already rebelling against policies of segregation on a genetic level, out of necessity.

Now we are in the final hours of a watershed moment in American cultural history and, regardless of who is elected, we are moving forward. Skin is more than a stirring portrait. It is a stark reminder of what it could mean to turn back.

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Ourweekly.com

Skin

The story of a ‘coloured’ white woman

By Gail Choice

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Culver City Observer

October 29, 2008 — Debbie Elias

In one of the best performances of his illustrious career, Sam Neill as Abraham Laing is riveting. While it was clear through Neill’s emotions that the Abraham was fighting to prove Sandra’s “whiteness”, he does so more to exonerate himself ; it was his own stubborn and hypocritical conduct that cost him his daughter, his wife’s love and left him to die under a spectre of guilt for the selfishness of his conduct. Neill’s portrayal is absolutely brilliant. Alice Krige is most convincing as Sandra’s mother Sannie Laing, although I note that even in expressing a mother’s love and embracing her own child, it is always done with an ambivalence that fueled the dichotomy of the characters and their true feelings towards Sandra. It’s a gifted performance.

Shot in and around Johannesburg from September to November 2007, director Anthony Fabian faced numerous challenges inherent with the region not the least of which was lightening strikes as this particular area has a micro-climate that attracts the greatest number of electrical storms in the world given the amount of metal in the earth in that region. With as much determination to succeed as Sandra Laing has demonstrated throughout her life, Fabian faced 50 locations in 42 days, making the project daunting at best. But then toss in a few mudslides into what we see on screen as Laing, 77 speaking roles, hundreds of extras and on one occasion close to 1000, plus wrangling hundreds of goats, dogs, chickens, bulldozers and a collapsible set all in one scene, and one has to wonder how Fabian pulled it off. Exquisite lensing showcasing the region is due to not only the bravery of cameramen Dewald Aukema and George Loxton amidst horrific weather conditions, but also due to their ingenuity. Thanks to Loxton one of the film’s most poignant and precious scenes made it onto film. During a windstorm, Loxton saw the beauty of a sunset behind the mountains but given the weather, standing there with a camera to capture it was out of the question. So he put the camera on high sticks or tripod, wrapped himself in plastic that was held down by an assistant and captured a massive lightening strike against a blood red sky. That may be “the money shot” of the film.

And for those of you who may be wondering, the film carries an epilogue with home movies, photos and postscripts about the Laing family. Wait until you see Sandra today! Who says dreams can’t come true. Without a doubt, Skin is my pick for the MUST SEE FESTIVAL FILM of AFI 2009. But be warned — take tissues, lots and lots of tissues.

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IndependentFilmsDirect.com

Skin Examines Tragic Story of Bi-Racial Girl in Apartheid South Africa

Written by Kent Victor Schuelke
Monday, 03 November 2008

Skin has its US Premiere at AFI Fest 2008 in Los Angeles.

Skin director Anthony Fabian first learned about Sandra Laing in 2000 when he heard a BBC report about Sandra and her story. “I was very compelled by the story and moved by it and angered by it and it was very clear to me from the beginning that there was a movie in it,” Fabian said. “It had epic scale and at the same time was very intimate. I like stories that have a small intimate heart but are set against a larger canvas.”

“I felt a great injustice had been done to her and that some reparations needed to be done for her and my way of doing that was telling this story,” Fabian said.

At the core of the film is the issue of identity. What makes us who we are? What factors influence our concepts of self? These are not easy questions to answer. And this fine movie makes no attempt to provide easy answers, but artfully demonstrates the human drama involved in the questions, and how the drama can become a tragedy when Racism is one of the story’s components.

Fabian, who was born in San Francisco and lived part of his childhood in Mexico, went to boarding school in England, and then returned to America at age 17 to attend UCLA. His parents divorced and his mother lives in LA and his father is now in London. After working in Hollywood for several years, Fabian decided to return to England in the late 1980s because he wanted to make more personal art films and the Sundance era of the modern US independent film movement had not really begun. Fabian now has duel citizenship in the United States and UK.

“Going back to England recharged my creative batteries,” Fabian, age 43, said.

But with all his moving about as a boy, Fabian felt drawn to a film like Skin that is about personal identity.

“It asked a very simple universal question — ‘Who am I, and where do I belong?’ — and this is a question that we all ask ourselves,” Fabian said.

Skin is an extraordinary movie that respects the complexity of the issues involved. Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) is riveting as the teenage and adult Sandra Laing, and Alice Krige and Sam Neill deliver first-class performances as Sandra’s parents Sannie and Abraham.

Sandra experienced rejection on so many levels, but to be rejected by one’s own parents may be the deepest cut of all.

“We all want the love and acceptance of our parents and in this case it was conditional, based on circumstances that were completely outside Sandra’s control,” Fabian said. “You want your parents’ acceptance and at the same time need to assert who you are.”

Fabian had never been to South Africa before traveling there to meet and talk with the real Sandra Laing about the possibility of the film. They have become close friends during the years it has taken to shepherd the story to the big screen.

“Sandra is a very fragile and damaged person. She’s very shy. She doesn’t like to look you in the eye,” Fabian said. “But telling her story has been a huge source of therapy for her. It’s been enormously cathartic.” Laing was born in 1955 and is now in her early 50s.

“She’s much stronger for having gone through all of this. She wants to share it,” Fabian continued. “She says she’s glad that people can see what apartheid did to people and that it must never happen again.”

Black audience members who have seen the film around the World are quick to remind Fabian that the struggles are not over.

“The black audience says ‘We’re still experiencing this in our own way. We’re still forced to suffer — don’t be fooled, the lighter your skin is the more success you’ll have,’” Fabian said.

Skin has its US premiere on the day before Americans go to the polls and might possibly elect the first African-American president in USA history. Fabian sees a bit of irony in the fact that Sandra Laing was punished for being bi-racial, but that America could elect a bi-racial president, but the political race frames Obama more as a Black American than a part-White American.

“First of all, Obama is always referred to as a Black candidate. He is bi-racial and is as much White as he is Black. It’s almost an exact parallel between Sandra’s story. He must have experienced the similar feelings of being an outsider,” Fabian said.

The South African government has requested a special screening of Skin before the country’s Parliament on November 14. Sandra Laing has been invited to the screening as a guest of honor.

“Apartheid did end and people did reconcile, but at the same time it’s important never to forget,” Fabian said.

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Starbulletin.com

Skin chronicles the life of a South African woman of mixed ethnicity, and Fabian said, “South Africans generally don’t see themselves reflected on the screen, and I was glad I was able to make a film about a real-life, ordinary person — not about a freedom fighter, or Nelson Mandela or (movement leader) Steven Biko — and the impact this insane system had on her life.”

The reverberations of the film that parallel the current American political scene are not lost on the filmmaker.

“Like Sandra, and Sophie Okonedo, the biracial actress who plays her, Barack Obama was brought up by a white family, so he, too, must have felt like an outsider in that context. The central question of the film is ‘Who am I, and where do I belong?’ And with the question of ‘Is he one of us?’ when looking at Barack, this is also about a politics of identity or, in African terms, ‘Does this man belong to our tribe?’”

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Jamati.com

Skin — Shows the Dilemma that Apartheid Brings One Family

Written by Shirlene Alusa-Brown | Posted Wednesday, November 5, 2008

As Sandra grows up and falls in love with a black man, Okonedo reveals the full spectrum of her character: the childhood hurt, the uncertain identities and, in time, her pride as an African woman.

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Honolulu Advertiser

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Beige-world.com

By David Burnett

Anthony Fabian’s choice to portray the young Sandra, Ella Ramangwane, was a stroke of genius. She bears a striking resemblance to the actual Sandra as a child, and she did a wonderful job in the film as well.

The music score, coupled with the sights and sounds of the South African countryside and the black townships, beautifully complement the film, which was shot entirely in Johannesburg. As you watch it on the big screen, you feel as though you’re actually there.

Among the many independent films out there, Skin is definitely a hidden gem. If it comes to your town, DON’T miss it.

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Honolulu Weekly

Skin manages to get under yours
by Ryan Senaga / 11-12-2008

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Xpress4me.com

Skin: Treating difficult subjects
by Pauline M Forte
Published: December 17, 2008, 14:58

Anthony Fabian and Alice Krige at
Dubai International Film Festival

The UK-South African film, Skin, is debut feature by award-winning documentarian Anthony Fabian set in 1950s rural South Africa. Based on real events, the film tells the story of Sandra Laing, a black girl born to white parents in South African during the Apartheid.

Fabian, Krige and Laing, along with her husband Johannes Motloung, walked the red carpet before the gala screening of the film, which was selected for the Cultural Bridge programme. Actress Sophie Okonedo, who portrays Laing, didn’t attend the festival.

“Racism is alive and well in the world unfortunately, and it’s one of the greatest ills there is. It’s what terrorism is all about,” Fabian said. “The message of the film is that diversity, multiculturalism, all wonderful things, but it should be a world of inclusion, not exclusion, because of difference.”

Legally classified as white, then black, young Laing faces a lifetime of difficulties. Her parents, Abraham (Sam Neill) and Sannie (Alice Krige), stoically fight to overturn the decision, bringing her expulsion from an all-white school to international attention. But when, at the age of 17, Sandra falls in love and elopes with Petrus, a black man, her father and brother disown her.

Laing, a very shy woman, stayed close to her husband on the red carpet, holding his hand the whole time. “I was glad that somebody wanted to make a movie to show the world how apartheid treated the people,” she said in a soft voice about finding out that Fabian wanted to make a movie based on her life.

Fabian said race is a difficult subject to do subtly because racism and prejudice are crude things to deal with. “We try to do it through the subtle ways in which people interact with each other, rather than through heavy-handed dialogue,” he explained. For instance, there’s a moment in the film when Sandra’s father taps the counter in a shop to tell a customer where to put the money because he doesn’t want to touch her skin. “You understand through that tiny gesture which happens in 10 seconds everything about his world,” the director and producer said. That’s in contract to Krige’s character, who in the same scene, takes money from somebody and put both her hands around his.

Krige, a South African, said she immediately accepted the role after reading the script because of the message it conveys but also because it gave her the opportunity for the second time in her career to portray a South African figure.

“I was able to let go of everything and dream my way back into my childhood,” she said. Specifically speaking about her character as Laing’s mother, she said, “Sannie’s strength is her enduring love for her child irrespective of the colour of her skin. She starts in a place of apprehension of fear about what the future holds, and then her life is taken apart. It was my feeling — and Sandra may have a different opinion — that her relationship with her husband became unbearably strained after the loss of Sandra, and her relationship with her sons was never the same again. She spent her life after Sandra left grieving.”

Kride’s journey is extraordinary because she starts off very fresh and loving and she ends up almost a husk of a person because of what she’s endured. Her emotions have almost dried out by the end. It’s only Sandra coming to water them at the very end, that sorts of rehydrates her emotionally.

Fabian was then asked about his future projects. “I’m very interested in films that teach people about other cultures. I’m currently developing two projects that are set in Russia, because I think there’s very little understanding about what Russian culture is really about,” he said.

Both Fabian and Brendan Fraser, who followed the Skin group on the red carpet to promote his children’s movie Inkheart, spoke highly about Dubai.

“I’m astonished by the place. I’m really pleasantly surprised. There’s a really positive energy and a sense of possibility of what can be done. It’s a place that’s trying to put itself on the map, and there’s something quite exciting about that. It’s the energy here that impresses me the most,” Fabian said.

The Canadian-American actor said that it was exciting to witness how progressive a city Dubai is and how much it’s growing exponentially. Inkheart, which premiered at DIFF on Sunday, is in competition for the Cinema for Children programme. Produced and directed by Iain Softley, the movie is about a young girl who discovers that she has inherited her father’s (Fraser) ability to bring storybook characters to life. The cast includes Andy Serkis, Helen Mirren, Paul Bettany, Eliza Hope Bennett, Jim Broadbent Rafi Gavron and Sienna Guillory.

The 40-year-old lead actor, known for his roles in The Mummy series, Crash and Journey to the Center of the Earth, was pretty sarcastic about his future career plans. “I’m thinking about doing some shingling on my house, look for a job, take some time, hang out with my kids (6, 4 and 2 years old), have a life,” Fraser said.

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Gulf News — review

Sandra Laing and Johannes Motlung at the Dubai International Film Festival, Middle East premiere of Skin

By Kelly Crane, Staff Reporter
Published: December 16, 2008, 23:30

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house as Sandra Laing, the real-life subject of Monday night’s gala screening of Skin, received a standing ovation after a surprise appearance.

The audience erupted as Anthony Fabian, first-time feature film director of Skin, introduced Laing — a black woman born to white parents in apartheid South Africa.

A film full of emotion, it wasn’t difficult to see where Fabian got his inspiration as Laing struggled to speak in front of the 1,200-strong crowd who stood before her.

Fighting back the tears and in sentences often finished or added to by Fabian, she said: “I just want to be able to say I’m sorry to my parents and ask their forgiveness.”

Questions from a clearly sympathetic and intrigued audience followed and Laing and Fabian answered between them.

Actress Alice Krige, who plays Laing’s mother in the 107 minute movie, Fabian and Laing with her husband Johannes Motloung walked the red carpet before the screening.

The incredibly shy Laing said she was having a wonderful time in Dubai. “I am very happy to be here,” she said, her eyes downcast. “I am so happy the film is being shown here as a gala screening. Thank you.”

Fabian stepped in and explained why he felt the film was so important today. “This film needs to be seen as the messages are so important. It is wonderful to have Skin as the gala screening and we hope everyone enjoys the movie. The atmosphere is great, the venue is great and the people are even better.”

Skin, selected as the gala film for the Cultural Bridge programme, follows Laing’s life from the age of around 10.

It explores the grim absurdities of apartheid South Africa as Laing, who faces a lifetime subjected to the cruelties of segregation, despite her white family, is legally classified first white, then black and then white again before her 16th birthday.

Her parents stoically fight to overturn governmental oppression, but when Laing falls in love and elopes with Petrus, a black man, her father and brother disown her.

Sophie Okonedo, who plays Laing, does a fantastic job of capturing the full spectrum of her character, from traumatic childhood through to maturity and adulthood as a proud African woman.

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Gulf News — article

Sandra Laing, Anthony Fabian, and Alice Krige during the red carpet screening of the movie Skin

By Kelly Crane, Staff Reporter
Published: December 16, 2008

Sandra Laing and Alice Krige were both born in South Africa in 1955 to white parents. Both women were classified white. But while Krige is white, Laing is black.

Nature had played a trick. Laing’s parents Abraham and Sannie Laing were white. Their parents, grandparents and great grandparents were white — she isn’t.

Krige, an actress who was born and raised in South Africa, says she was “honoured” to have been chosen to portray the difficult struggles of Sandra Laing in the true-to-life movie Skin.

“Sandra and I grew up in the same South Africa and yet we didn’t in so many ways.

“She was subjected to a life of discrimination, oppression and loss. I was enormously privileged in ways I didn’t really even appreciate. So this story is one which needs to be told.”

By a biological quirk and genetic throwback, the pigment of an unknown black ancestor had lain dormant for generations and then manifested in Laing. But if there was ever a wrong place and a wrong time for something like that to happen, it was South Africa during apartheid.

“This story was a flare in the darkness for me,” said Krige. “I read the script and instantly agreed. I had no reservations and knew it was the right thing to do.”

Avoiding eye contact and lowering her voice, Laing is unwilling to open up very much. She says she’s “much happier with black people,” adding, “I am, I was, very shy with white people.”

Her life is an emotional tale of a search for identity in a system built on race and prejudice, where house life, education, work and all social interaction was all demarcated by skin colour.

Eager to speak about a film that has clearly touched him very deeply, first time feature film director Anthony Fabian is desperate to help Laing express what she finds difficult.

“It’s a mild way of putting things to say someone was expelled from school, mocked, abused, persecuted and told she was inferior. Sandra’s life was turned upside down by a political system she knew nothing about.”

This was never going to be a flash-in-the-pan project for Fabian and he spent more than seven years making the film to ensure that the story was told as accurately as possible.

“Sandra is a very shy lady, mainly due to what she has been through, so it has taken a long time to really understand her story, the actions of her family and South Africa at that time.”

Having first heard Laing’s story on a BBC Radio 4 segment, Fabian said he knew instantly it was the story he wanted to highlight by making his first feature.

“Within 20 minutes of the broadcast I was in tears. The show featured the discrimination faced by disabled people around the world and the journalist had come across Sandra and decided being black in SA during apartheid was actually worse than being disabled so she could feature.

“I tracked Sandra down and we met a few times and started on the long road to slowly unravelling the story.”

As Laing’s mother and father died more than 20 years ago, Fabian said one of the biggest challenges was telling the stories of the parents who disowned their daughter at the age of 17.

“Luckily there was so much documentation from newspapers, magazines and files over the past 40 years, we had a good idea of their true attitudes and ideas. That, added to Sandra’s memories and recollections, allowed us to almost create a psychology for her father — even though he is no longer with us.

“One of the biggest challenges of making the movie was staying true. We had to be rigorous, but without inventing anything.”

Proceeds from the movie, along with a book about Laing’s story, which has been told repeatedly in South Africa over the past 40 years, have made it possible for Laing and her husband, Johannes Motloung, to buy their own home.

“The South African government has a copy of the film and they have since made all members of parliament watch it. They have also said they would like every school child to watch the movie over the next few years, and are considering making this compulsory,” Fabian said.

Krige concluded, saying: “It is a fantastic story of a family that is completely destroyed by the political system. However, I believe you can draw some happiness from the fact the essential bond between mother and daughter survives.

“It is wonderful to see — it is a kind of love that simply cannot be broken, no matter what it has to endure.”

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Khaleej Times

Alice Krige, Anthony Fabian, Sandra Laing and Johannes Motlung at the Dubai International Film Festival, Middle East premiere of Skin

Of a Black Woman Born to White Parents
Emily Meredith
17 December 2008

DUBAI — When director Anthony Fabian first contacted Sandra Laing, a black woman born to white parents in South Africa, she was staying in a rented house.

She had been the subject of two documentary films and scores of print articles but, despite her small fame and relatively well-off family members, she had few resources.

Laing is the subject of Anthony Fabian’s debut feature film Skin, one of the films selected for the Cultural Bridge Gala at this year’s Dubai International Film Festival. After listening to an interview with Sandra on BBC seven years ago, Fabian, who has made documentary films until now, said he sought her out almost immediately.

“I just felt the injustice of the story very deeply,” Fabian said. “I wanted to know how it could happen.”

Sandra Laing, who was in Dubai for the Middle East premier of Skin Monday night, acts similarly. She answers the questions politely but briefly, only elaborating when prompted by further questions from Fabian, with whom she worked both on and off the set.

Alice Krige, the white actress who plays Sandra’s mother Sannie in the film, is a South African who also grew up during apartheid but experienced it from a very different perspective.

“Sandra and I are exact contemporaries. We grew up in South Africa living parallel lives that were very different,” Krige said. “I had the best the country had to offer in terms of education, the best in terms of everything.”

The Dutch first colonized South Africa in the late 14th century. After several generations, many people of mixed race were light skinned enough for their black ancestry to be invisible. But when two white people with black genes had children, the children could be darker than their parents. Sandra and her younger brother both look to be of mixed race, although her younger brother is lighter.

Krige said she could trace her family members in South Africa to the Dutch in the 1600s. “There is no way that I do not have a black genetic background. I have a polygenetic profile in the way that Sandra did,” Krige said. “The absurdity of it is untenable.” While many in South Africa and throughout the world now know Sandra’s life story, her family whom she left to marry a black man, prefers to remain unknown.

“I think that her brothers took the point of view that once she decided to live as a black person, she had made an irreversible choice,” Fabian said. “I think they also feel that they too suffered,” he added, speculating that her brothers were upset that Laing decided to allow her story to be made into a book and movie.

Laing appeared sad by the ongoing estrangement with her family.

“I am sorry that I hurt them and I couldn’t apologize,” she said, talking about her parents. Fabian reminded her that she was able to reconcile with her mother, the subject of the film’s ending scene. Laing quickly, but softly, replied. “Yeah, but not my father. I always feel that I must apologize to them. They were trying to save me and I went to live with black people.”

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