Bopha! is a 1993 drama film directed by Morgan Freeman and starring Danny Glover. It was adapted from a 1986 play by Percy Mtwa and was Freeman's directorial debut. Glover plays Micah Mangena, a black police officer in South Africa during the apartheid era. Micah is tough but honest, and he believes he is doing the best for his people. He is a sergeant, with a white superior officer and in a mostly-black force. You see him training new recruits, all of them black. His son Zweli Mangena is in a difficult position - Micah wants him to become a policeman and follow his example. Zweli loves his... father, but has doubts about whether it is right to follow in his father's footsteps. Wider events are barely seen, though they obviously have an influence. In 1986, when the play was written, Nelson Mandela was still in prison. By 1993, when the film was released, he was free but the future was still very uncertain. Bopha says little about such matters. This is a conflict in a small township involving people of which the outside world would not have heard. The film opens with a black crowd burning alive a black police officer, from a nearby ghetto that they regard as a traitor.
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| Release date: | September 17, 1993 |
| Directed by: | Morgan Freeman |
| Rated: |  |
| Runtime: | 120 Minutes |
| Producer: | Lawrence N. Taubman |
| Editor: | Neil Travis |
| Music by: | James Horner |
| Cinematography: | David Watkin |
| Screenplay by: | Brian Bird, John Wierick |