RESONANCE ARCHIVE FESTIVAL: Dilemma (1962)

Anaphora Films in association with The South Festival of Memory, present the inaugural instalment of ‘Resonance Archive Festival’, taking place in Johannesburg from August 27 – 31, 2025 bringing together filmmakers, artists, academics, historians and cultural practitioners to reflect on the past, question the present and shape future memory. 

SEE THE FULL FESTIVAL PROGRAM FOR THE BIOSCOPE HERE.

Dilemma, 1962

Dir: Henning Carlsen

Starring: Zakes Mokae, Ivan Jackson, Gideon Nxumalo

Runtime: 89 mins

Toby, a young English businessman, arrives in South Africa to take charge of a publishing firm. He knows little about apartheid and so at first sees no contradiction in developing a relationship with an elite, upper-class white woman and with a woman dedicated to fighting apartheid. But as Toby makes friends with a black South African (Zaku Mokae), and as he registers both the subtle and more obvious, deep-seated racial prejudices of the minority white population, some of the truth of the oppression here begins to dawn. That is brought to a head when tragedy strikes.

Dilemma was shot clandestinely in Johannesburg. It is based on Nobel Prize Winner Nadine Gordimer’s novel, A World of Strangers.