Escape from Pretoria is a 2020 prison-break thriller directed by Francis Annan and led by Daniel Radcliffe and Daniel Webber. Set in South Africa in 1978, it follows two imprisoned political activists who decide that waiting out their sentences is not an option and begin working on a way out of Pretoria Prison.
What is Escape from Pretoria about?
The year is 1978. Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, two white South Africans who have been active on behalf of the African National Congress, are convicted and sent to Pretoria Prison under the apartheid government of the time. Inside, the routine is rigid: fixed hours, locked corridors, guards who watch every movement, and a series of doors standing between the cells and the street. Rather than accept the years ahead of them, the two men start studying that routine closely. From those observations a plan slowly takes shape, one that depends on patience, secrecy and steady nerves, and on a few fellow inmates being willing to share the risk. The film stays close to the preparation itself, building its tension from details and near-discoveries rather than from large action scenes.
About the cast
Daniel Radcliffe and Daniel Webber head the cast, joined by Ian Hart, Mark Leonard Winter, Nathan Page, Grant Piro, Len Firth and Lliam Amor. Francis Annan directs.
Context & significance
The production is an international one, with Australia, Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States all listed as countries of origin. It is catalogued as a thriller and runs 106 minutes. The setting is the South Africa of the late 1970s, during the apartheid period, and the film uses that era as the historical background for a story that is mainly about confinement and the mechanics of an escape attempt. Its reception among general audiences has been broadly favourable.
Watching Escape from Pretoria on Ktime
Escape from Pretoria is available on K-Time with both a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, so it can be watched in Farsi or in the original audio with Farsi text. This page is free to read; playing the film requires signing in to a K-Time account. The service is built for Persian-speaking viewers abroad, with a Farsi interface throughout.