Photo: YouTube/Rapid Trailer
Watch: Trailer released for Daniel Radcliffe’s ‘Escape From Pretoria’ [video]
‘Escape From Pretoria’ follows a dramatic real-life escape of activist Tim Jenkin from Pretoria Maximum Security Prison in the late 1970s.
Photo: YouTube/Rapid Trailer
The official trailer for Daniel Radcliffe’s new movie, Escape From Pretoria, has been released ahead of its March 2020 premiere.
The film centres around a real-life escape from the Pretoria Maximum Security Prison in South Africa in 1979.
In the film, the Harry Potter star plays South African activist Tim Jenkin who was imprisoned and sentenced to 12 years in Pretoria’s Maximum Security Prison in the late 1970s. The film is ultimately based on Jenkin’s autobiography, Inside Out: Escape from Pretoria Prison. The film also stars Ian Hart (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone) and Stephen Hunter (from The Hobbit trilogy fame) and was directed by British director Francis Annan.
Wooden keys used in escape
Along with the trailer, a short description of the film follows:
“From the incredible true story imprisonment and escape in apartheid era South Africa, ‘Escape from Pretoria’ is a super tense prison break thriller. Radcliffe stars as Tim Jenkin – a real life ANC activist who was imprisoned in Africa’s maximum-security Pretoria prison in the late 1970s.”
Along with two imprisoned fellow freedom fighters, played by Daniel Webber and Mark Leonard Winter, Jenkin escaped on 11 December 1979 using handmade wooden keys which he crafted while incarcerated. The three, jailed for terrorism, subsequently fled to Europe after their escape.
Jenkin told TimesLIVE a while ago that he will be very excited when sitting at the premiere about to watch the film for the first time.
Filming the escape
Cape Town was revived in Adelaide’s (Australia) Pirie Street for the filming of Escape from Pretoria among other places. It is said that CA number plates adorned old vehicles in the street, coin-operated parking meters were installed and even the magazines on sale at a hawker’s stall were made to look authentically 1970s.
Jenkin also said that he was disappointed that the movie, financed with the assistance of the South Australia Film Corporation, was not filmed in South Africa.
