Miners Shot Down, a documentary by Rehad Desai which recounts and examines the Marikana miners’ strike in 2012, has been nominated for the Cinema for Peace
Award and will feature at the Luxor African Film Festival in Egypt and FESPACO in
Burkina Faso. The Cinema for Peace Gala in Berlin will take place in Berlin on 9 February 2015.
“We are overjoyed about the prospect of millions of Africans seeing this story on TV
sets and in local cinemas. Both of these festivals are highly respected and this will
give further exposure to one of South Africa’s most important events in the post-apartheid period,’ commented Desai.
The annual event aims to raise awareness of the social relevance of film and to
make active use of the influence of movies and documentaries on the perception
and resolution of the global social, political and humanitarian challenges of our
time. In recent years Cinema for Peace has also established itself in New York, Los
Angeles and Cannes, and has supported a number of important causes with the help
of artists such as Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, George Clooney, Leonardo
DiCaprio, Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron and personalities such as
the Dalai Lama, Muhammad Ali, Bill and Hillary Clinton, president Mikhail
Gorbachev and our former Honorary Patron Nelson Mandela.
