A United Kingdom

Watch the trailer of the film "A United Kingdom"

Based on a true story. David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike star as real-life couple Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams, who caused an international outcry when they married in 1948.

London, 1947. Jazz lovers Seretse Khama (Oyelowo, also at the Festival in Queen of Katwe) and Ruth Williams (Pike) meet at a Missionary Society dance. The evening is electric, perhaps in part because both know their attraction is fraught. She’s an accomplished office worker, and white. He is a charming law student, and black. What he can’t tell her at first is that he’s also a prince, first in line to the throne of Bechuanaland (today’s Botswana). But despite the obstacles, it’s love.

When the time comes for Seretse to return home to lead his people’s independence movement, he impulsively proposes to Ruth. She accepts, but no one else does — not her family nor his. Neither does South Africa’s government, which controls uranium Britain badly needs, and stands on the eve of making apartheid a national policy. They won’t tolerate an interracial couple leading a neighbouring country, so Britain begins to work against what once seemed like the simple love between Seretse and Ruth.

Having already portrayed Martin Luther King Jr. in 2014’s Selma, Oyelowo provides another stirring depiction of a heroic figure who used nonviolence to change the world’s attitude toward racial integration. Pike is likewise magnetic as a woman whose openheartedness won over a culture initially inclined to shun her.

Their story plays out against a backdrop of regal English offices and sun-kissed Botswana plains. With her third feature, Asante has masterfully invoked a tumultuous moment in 20th-century Africa — one that boasts a glorious ending

Lagaan

A 2001 Indian Hindi-language epic musical sports film written and directed by Ashutosh Gowariker, and produced by Aamir Khan. Lagaan received widespread critical acclaim and awards at international film festivals, as well as many Indian film awards. It became the third Indian film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film after Mother India (1957) and Salaam Bombay ! (1988).

The film is set in the early 1890s, during the late Victorian period of India’s colonial British Raj. The story revolves around a small village in Gujarat whose inhabitants, burdened by high taxes, and several years of drought, find themselves in an extraordinary situation as an arrogant British army officer challenges them to a game of cricket, as a wager to avoid paying the taxes they owe. The narrative spins around this situation as the villagers face the arduous task of learning a game that is alien to them and playing for a result that will change their village’s destiny.

You can read this article from columbia.edu and this one from the Guardian

Cry Freedom

Listen to this song by Peter Gabriel about Steve Biko, a noted black South African anti-apartheid activist. Biko had been arrested by the South African police in late August 1977. After being held in custody for several days, he was interrogated in room 619 of the Walmer Street prison in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape. Following the interrogation, during which he sustained serious head injuries, Biko was transferred to a prison in Pretoria, where he died shortly afterwards, on 12 September 1977. The album version of the song is bookended by a recording of the South African song "Senzeni Na ?" as sung at Biko’s funeral. It was first played on South African TV and radio stations after apartheid was abolished in 1990.

This video shows images from the 1987 British drama film directed by Richard Attenborough, entitled CRY FREEDOM

 BIKO LYRICS :

September ’77

Port Elizabeth weather fine

It was business as usual

In police room 619

Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko

Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko

Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja

The man is dead

When I try to sleep at night

I can only dream in red

The outside world is black and white

With only one colour dead

Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko

Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko

Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja

The man is dead

You can blow out a candle

But you can’t blow out a fire

Once the flames begin to catch

The wind will blow it higher

Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko

Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja

The man is dead

And the eyes of the world are

watching now

watching now

Readthis article from vox.com, this one from the Guardian and this one from the New Yorker