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Plot Summary
A Tribeca Film. Award-winning biopic about poet Ingrid Jonker, regarded as South Africa’s Sylvia Plath, as she finds her freedom in the height of 1960’s Apartheid by scripting verse amidst a series of stormy love affairs.
Credits
Director
Screenwriter
Rotten Tomatoes Movie Reviews
TOMATOMETER
73%- Reviews Counted: 11
- Fresh: 8
- Rotten: 3
- Average Rating: 6.1/10
Top Critics' Reviews
Fresh: The movie reminds you of the extent to which poetry has been marginalized as a cultural force since the early 1960s.
Fresh: The uncompromising power of Ingrid Jonker's poetry runs like a pulsing vein through Black Butterflies, a 1960s-set drama whose several strong points include the angry intensity of Carice van Houten's fearless perf.
Fresh: Paula van der Oest's biopic of South African poet Ingrid Jonker is conventional yet captivating thanks in large part to a terrific lead performance from Carice van Houten.
Rotten: Art, politics, and craziness conspire to form a rather mechanical melodrama in Black Butterflies...
Customer Reviews
Extremely powerful! Cannot reccomend enough
I grew up in Cape Town and found myself completely enamoured with the cinematography. Black butterflies captures the time, the landscape and the people brilliantly, the film is well excuted and nothing short of excellent. I have praise for it right down to the little details- it is one of the few South African based films that I feel has even managed to portray the accents and social lives properly. Black Butterflies is the kind of film that stays with you long after the credits have started rolling, the characters will haunt you for days and the words echo in your mind with a most powerful account of a South African legend. An essential for any South African or anyone interested in its history and literature. I get goosebumps everytime I think of it.
Incredible!
I saw this last year at TriBeCa. Very powerful.
Great piece of Herstory
I’m glad that you took the time to make this film.
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- $12.99
- Genre: Drama
- Released: 2011
- © 2010 MMX Comet Film GmbH/Spier Productions Partnership/NRT