Nelson Mandela, an iconic South African president and human rights leader, has been the subject of countless books, documentaries and feature films. His extraordinary life — especially the more than two decades he spent imprisoned under the country’s brutal apartheid regime — stands as one of the 20th century’s most enduring stories of political resilience and moral courage. Troublemaker, the Antoine Fuqua-directed documentary that premiered at Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 27, is the latest project to revisit Mandela’s life and legacy. The film promises fresh insight through never-before-heard audio recordings of Mandela made while he was writing his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. Unfortunately, both the recordings themselves and the way they are deployed in the documentary fail to live up to the hype surrounding them.
Structurally, the film adheres to a familiar documentary framework. It swiftly earns its title as Mandela recounts the story of his birth, explaining that Rolihlahla — his given name — is a colloquialism that means “troublemaker.” While this anecdote effectively establishes a thematic throughline for his life, Troublemaker ultimately fails to engage with or interrogate that theme in any meaningful way. Instead, the film rushes through the well-documented milestones of Mandela’s life: his birth and childhood; his early political activism and the path to his imprisonment; the intensifying oppression of Black South Africans under apartheid during his incarceration and the media landscape shaped by censorship; the clandestine writing of Long Walk to Freedom; and his eventual release and emergence as a global icon and political leader. Though Mandela’s recordings serve to announce these moments, they offer little insight into his interior life or emotional experience across them.
Troublemaker intermittently flirts with being compelling across its 94-minute runtime. Its most engaging section centers on Mandela’s years on Robben Island, the notorious political prison off the coast of Cape Town. Here, the film briefly slows down, allowing Mandela to reflect on the personal costs of his “troublemaking”: his estrangement from his wife and children, who are described as “political orphans.” The stakes heighten as he secretly begins drafting his autobiography, relying on South African Indian politician Mac Maharaj — also a producer for Troublemaker — to smuggle the manuscript out of prison for international publication ahead of Maharaj’s release. That effort is unsuccessful, but again, Troublemaker glosses over its failure. Moments of emotional depth flicker in this section, but they are never fully explored or sustained.
Another intriguing section arrives later, when the documentary examines Generation X’s adoption of Mandela as a symbolic leader — often without a deep understanding of his political advocacy or moral philosophy. Troublemaker misses the chance to fully animate this cultural phenomenon. It chooses instead to gesture vaguely at Mandela’s global resurgence rather than interrogate how and why it took shape. Even potentially revealing personal details, such as his fondness for Tracy Chapman, register as fleeting color rather than narrative threads the film is willing to pull.
Though Troublemaker falls flat more often than it rises to the occasion, it remains visually arresting. Artist and documentary animator Thabang Lehobye stitches together striking, evocative imagery that lends Mandela’s story a sense of immediacy and vitality. The visual language is not only the film’s most consistent strength — it is its most exciting and fully realized element.
Ultimately, Fuqua’s Troublemaker functions as an accessible — but predictable — overview of Mandela’s advocacy. Its beats are familiar and easy to follow, making it well-suited for viewers encountering the life and legacy of the former South African president for the first time. For those already acquainted with Mandela’s story, however, the film feels less like an intimate portrait and more like history observed from a distance — carefully assembled, but rarely felt.
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