Mugabe And The White African

What makes this film unique is the fact of its existence. Every time co-directors Andrew Thompson and Lucy Bailey smuggled camera equipment into Zimbabwe they risked arrest and a long prison sentence. This is the news story. As well as Mike Campbell’s court case. And yet in the extras, that include a commentary, a Making Of and a How We Did It section, the dangers are underplayed.

Thompson’s background is in TV documentaries and this is Bailey’s first feature-length picture. There were times, Thompson admits, in 2008 when “we wondered whether it would ever end.” Nothing was predictable and little could be planned. Election violence was ramping up at the time of the court hearings, which made their presence on the streets, especially with a hidden camera, extremely hazardous. Black workers took enormous risks talking to them. “Some have since been murdered,” Bailey says. She admits that “we were really upset that we could not get in before they were beaten up.” She means that she and Thompson were out of the country when the Campbells were attacked (“It probably saved Andrew’s life”), so that the scenes of them lying half dead on hospital mattresses were shot by a friend, while they were in Kent filming Ben’s mother’s reaction to the news.

For a documentary of such importance, the extras appear too modest. Both co-directors are self deprecating and reluctant to exaggerate their difficulties. “We want people to think hard,” Bailey says. “This is not a campaign film.” The story of how producers came on board and money was found and a decision taken to use a large format camera rather than something the size of an iPad is interesting enough, but for those who want to feel the fear at the core of Zimbabwe’s ruin they may be disappointed.