‘Tutu’ Documentary On Archbishop Desmond Tutu Premieres At Berlinale

South Africa’s racist system of Apartheid endured for generations and, so brutally was it maintained, appeared impregnable. One of those who played a vital role in its unlikely demise was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the religious leader and theologian.

He did it through much more than prayer alone.

“I am a man of peace but not a pacifist,” the archbishop says early in the documentary Tutu, directed by Sam Pollard, which makes its world premiere today at the Berlin Film Festival.

“He was a man of peace, but he was an activist,” Pollard explains. “And you can be a man of peace, and you can be an activist. He was going to challenge the status quo in South Africa — always. He wasn’t going to stand by and let things just continue the way they had been for so many years and decades. And he wasn’t saying that he wanted violence, but he was like Dr. King. He was a man who knew that the impact and the importance of non-violent resistance could go a long way in helping a country rid itself with such a racist regime.”

The film examines Archbishop Tutu’s emergence as a driver of the anti-Apartheid movement after the 1976 Soweto uprising, the murder in police custody of Steve Biko in 1977, and during the long imprisonment of Nelson Mandela.

“He led the charge when Nelson Mandela was incarcerated. He was front and center in leading the charge to get rid of Apartheid in South Africa and reached out beyond South Africa globally to Great Britain, to the United States, to basically say, ‘You need to support getting rid of Apartheid in our country,’” Pollard tells Deadline. “And I think part of the fact that he was not only an archbishop, but the Nobel [Peace Prize] laureate helped really have his message reach so many, many places and people.”

As the documentary explores, Tutu wasn’t always in lockstep with Mandela’s militant African National Congress.

“His faith was first and foremost the foundation of everything in terms of what he was all about,” Pollard insists. “And without that faith, he could have gone further to the left, but he didn’t. He had his faith and he had his belief in his fellow man, no matter what your color was, that things could change. And that’s what made him so special. We miss someone like him today in our world. We need Desmond Tutu in our society today where the countries and the world seem so fractured. We need a unifier. And he was that type of gentleman. He was a unifier.”

Tutu had to navigate constant threats to his life and tremendous vitriol from most white South Africans who clung to the system of white power and privilege.

“He was looked at as a radical, just like Dr. King was seen as a radical. ‘How dare he want to have Apartheid banished in his country? How could this man of cloth even be talking out loud like that?’” Pollard says. “In the sequence in the film when he becomes Archbishop we show some of the white people responding that he’s not doing it right, he shouldn’t be talking about these kinds of issues. ‘He should be just a man of God.’ That goes against the whole notion of what a man of God should be about. He should speak truth to power. And that’s what he did. And him being vilified was probably part of what urged him on, and made him say, ‘We need to stop this. We need to change things in South Africa.’”

Key to his effectiveness was a charisma and capacity to charm. The Desmond Tutu smile radiated.

“He had a sense of humor,” the filmmaker notes. “He knew how to speak to all people on all levels. This was a man who could disarm you. This was a man who was very articulate, who could get his point across without making you fearful. Even though some people reviled him, he could also make other people fall in love with him.”

Tutu explores the extraordinary partnership between the archbishop and his wife, Nomalizo Leah Shenxane.

“Leah was such an important presence and force in his life. One of the things we tried to do with this film was not only talk about him as the man but also talk about him as a husband and the intimate and personal relationship he had with Leah who was a supporter and a partner in his journey to rid the country of Apartheid. You see that this is not just a biopic, this is also a very intimate love story between Leah and Desmond Tutu. And one of the great things for me in this project has been the opportunity to spend some time with Leah when I was in South Africa, and to get her blessing to make this film about this world-renowned figure.”

Tutu continued his role of moral leadership after the fall of Apartheid and the election of Mandela as the first president of a liberated South Africa. Mandela chose Tutu for the near impossible task of chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the body that – as its name suggests – was meant to both investigate crimes against humanity during the Apartheid regime but also somehow bring the new nation together.

Tutu died in 2021 at the age of 90. He did not live to see President Donald Trump, in 2025 confront Mandela’s successor as president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, over a purported “genocide” of white South African farmers. The BBC is among the journalistic entities that have describe those claims as “widely discredited.” Nonetheless, Trump has used those assertions to justify granting white South African farmers asylum in the U.S., while largely preventing non-white people from other parts of the world from entering America to avoid political persecution.

Were Tutu alive today, the archbishop wouldn’t lend any credence to Trump’s claims, Pollard believes.

“He would chuckle, and it would turn into a huge laugh at the outrageousness of that idea that white South Africans are being demonized and killed in South Africa,” Pollard maintains. “He’d probably make some kind of statement that would articulate the fact that this is absolutely outrageous… But listen, when Donald J. Trump talks about fake news, this is fake news, simple as that. And Tutu would say, this is outrageous.”

Pollard heads to the Berlinale as a film he executive produced, The Perfect Neighbor, competes for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards. He was nominated in that category in 1998 for producing 4 Little Girls, the Spike Lee-directed film about the Ku Klux Klan bombing of a church in Birmingham, AL in 1963 that claimed the lives of four young Black girls.

In addition to its world premiere today, Tutu screens at the Berlinale on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday.

“I’m very, very excited,” Pollard tells us of the premiere. “This is the first time one of my films has been in the Berlin Film Festival. So, I’m looking forward to dealing with the cold, but having the film be seen by many, many, many, many people. I think quite honestly that it is the perfect festival to premiere our film about Desmond Tutu, such a wonderful and impactful global figure.”