The film Zulu premiered at the closing of the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday in France. Directed by Jérôme Salle, the film stars South African actor, Conrad Kemp, Orlando Bloom and Forest Whitaker. Zulu is a crime thriller, where Whitaker plays a cop searching for the murderer of a white teenage boy and discovers the “wounds of post-apartheid South Africa.”

In preparation for Whitaker’s role in the movie, he met with real-life Zulu gang members. Some had just been released from jail. Whitaker said:

I met the actual gang members from the different communities: the Zulu gang leaders and the different members out of the prisons … I find that it helps to find the source of the character.

The violent crimes unit took me around quite a bit … which helped me understand what it was like to be around the townships.

Whitaker submerged himself in the communities to better prepare for his role, even learning Afrikaans and Zulu.

I was dealing with officers and people in the community were saying: ‘They’re not listening to us. They’re not helping us. They’re allowing people to do these horrible things in our neighbourhood. We have to take charge. We are the elders of this community, and we are not going to allow certain things to happen’.

And where does all that come from? Where is the pain that brings out these things? I think that’s what’s going to have to be addressed.

Despite the explicit movie and what was seen on the ground, Whitaker is still hopeful for the country, stating that it is full of potential, “it’s growing, it’s changing, it’s moving.”

[Source: Mail & Guardian]