After several fictional accounts of her life in film and TV, Winnie Mandela’s story will be central in a new documentary from director Pascale Lamche, which is scheduled to make its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival next month.

Tina Lifford played her in the 1997 TV film “Mandela and de Klerk.” Sophie Okonedo portrayed her in the BBC drama “Mrs Mandela.” Jennifer Hudson played her in “Winnie Mandela.” And most recently, in the 2013 film “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,” she was played by Naomie Harris – a performance Mrs. Mandela praised, reportedly telling Harris that it was “the first time she felt her story had been captured on film.”

Director Pascale Lamche’s Sundance Film Festival-bound feature documentary is titled “Winnie,” and will, for the first time, piece together and properly consider the evidence and the propaganda (in the context of the times) that condemned the controversial Winnie Madikizela Mandela who occupies a contradictory space in the public consciousness as both victim and perpetrator, passionately loved, but also vilified.




The Sundance synopsis reads: While her husband served a life sentence, paradoxically kept safe and morally uncontaminated, Winnie Mandela rode the raw violence of apartheid, fighting on the front line and underground. This is the untold story of the mysterious forces that combined to take her down, labeling him a saint, her, a sinner.

Further described as part political soap opera, part Greek tragedy, Lamche’s film promises to tell the “real story of Winnie Mandela,” taking audiences us on a complex journey unpacking the inextricable relationship between her and Nelson Mandela, and defining the very nature of power.

“Winnie” is produced by Christoph Jörg for Pumpernickel Films and Eric Tavitian for Ran Entertainment.

No trailer at this time.