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Known For

Shawn Slovo is known for:

  • Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight
    Muhammad Ali’s historic Supreme Court battle from behind closed doors. When Ali was drafted into the Vietnam War at the height of his boxing career, his claim to conscientious objector status led to a controversial legal battle that rattled the U.S. judicial system right up to the highest court in the land.
  • Captain Corelli's Mandolin
    When a Greek fisherman leaves to fight with the Greek army during WWII, his fiancee falls in love with the local Italian commander. The film is based on a novel about an Italian soldier's experiences during the Italian occupation of the Greek island of Cephalonia (Kefalonia), but Hollywood made it into a pure love story by removing much of the "unpleasant" stuff.
  • Catch a Fire
    The true story of anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, and particularly the life of Patrick Chamusso, a timid foreman at Secunda CTL, the largest synthetic fuel plant in the world. Patrick is wrongly accused, imprisoned and tortured for an attempt to bomb the plant, with the injustice transforming the apolitical worker into a radicalised insurgent, who then carries out his own successful sabotage mission.

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Biography

Born in South Africa in 1950 as daughter to white anti-apartheid activists Joe Slovo and Ruth First, she grew up in London after the family in 1964 arrived in the UK as political refugees. In the late 1970s she served as Robert De Niro's personal assistant while he made the films 'Raging Bull' and 'The King of Comedy'. Her first screenplay and first film, 'A World Apart,' directed by Chris Menges, won the Jury Prize, and the Ecumenical and Best Actress Awards at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, and the 1988 BAFTA Best Original Screenplay Award. She lives in northern London. Her sister Robyn Slovo is a successful film producer, and her sister Gillian Slovo is a novelist.