In My Country (2004)

Juliette Binoche: Anna Malan

Photos 

Quotes 

• Anna Malan : [last lines - voiceover]  Because of you, this land no longer lies between us but within. It breathes becalmed, after being wounded in its wondrous throat. In the cradle of my skulll it sings, it ignites my tongue. Five thousand stories are scorched on your skin. I am changed forever.. I want to say, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.

• Anna Malan : [voiceover]  They are my blood, The marrow of my bones, And this is my landscape, This is what I'm made of, I cannot escape it, I cannot deny it, Yet, I must.

• Langston Whitfield : Where was God when they needed him?

  Anna Malan : He was on our side.

• Anna Malan : [voiceover]  In their Sunday best, They come, Mothers and wives, Searching for a place, To put their grief, Truth has become a woman, Everybody recognizes her, And yet, Nobody knows her.

• Dumi Mkhalipi : [to Anna after she takes a cigarette from Dumi]  You don't smoke.

  [to Whitfield after he takes a cigarette from Dumi] 

  Dumi Mkhalipi : You don't smoke.

  Anna Malan : I need a drink.

  Dumi Mkhalipi : I know a place.

  Langston Whitfield : I got a car.

• Anna Malan : [voiceover]  They rise up like the dead, On the day of reckoning, Voice after voice, Story after story, How obediently, We sat in that schoolhouse, And learn a lesson, A history lesson, The hidden history of a shameful past.

• Langston Whitfield : You never finished telling me about African justice. What exactly does Ubuntu mean?

  Anna Malan : It means we're all connected. What hurts you, hurts me. What affects you, affects me, what affects everyone.

• Anna Malan : I'm not talking about skin.

  Langston Whitfield : Well, I am. See, skin is everything. It's all about skin. Skin is what draws the line in the sand.

• Anna Malan : I'm African.

  Langston Whitfield : No. No, no, no, no, no. Not in my book. And definitely not in any Tarzan movies I ever saw.

  Anna Malan : I belong to this continent.

  Langston Whitfield : How do you belong to a continent?

  Anna Malan : I would die for it.

  Langston Whitfield : Well, I guess I don't belong anywhere then. If you're black in America, everyday of your life, you're made to feel like you don't belong. In fact, they keep trying to send us back here. Why would I die for a country where I'm not welcome?

• Anna Malan : [Platonically sharing a bed with Langston and Dumi while being stuck in the middle of nowhere]  What's so funny?

  Langston Whitfield : I was just thinking. A black man sleeping with a white woman in South Africa. A few years ago, I could have gotten life in prison for doing something like that.

  Anna Malan : What about a white woman sleeping with two black men?

  Langston Whitfield : What would you have gotten?

  Anna Malan : Well, possibly, um, a lot of satisfaction.

• Anna Malan : When the security police rape women in detention, they justified it by claiming it was necessary to extract information. So, do you think you can rape with a political motive?

• Anna Malan : All their words they used to humiliate people, the orders to kill people, to torture people, were given my own language, Afrikaans. The language of my heart. The language in which I wrote about love, beauty, tenderness. What does that make me? I'm so ashamed.

• Langston Whitfield : I didn't know? No where have I heard that? You didn't know about people being electrocuted?

  Anna Malan : No.

  Langston Whitfield : Hands in bottles?

  Anna Malan : No.

  Langston Whitfield : You didn't know about tongues being pulled out?

  Anna Malan : What do you want me to say? Yes, I knew. Yes, I saw things. Is that what you want? Yes. Yes! Yes! So, I knew things! We all knew things! But, none of the fucking details.

  Langston Whitfield : You call cutting a man's hands off: details? You call shooting a woman in the vagina a *fucking* detail?

• Felicia Rheinhardt : Anna, the story about the mother who goes to the mortuary and finds her son with his intestines all hanging out, you didn't say "she shit on the floor" did you?

  Anna Malan : No, I did not. I said that she slipped on the floor - in all the blood.

  Felicia Rheinhardt : Oh, thank God. I was worried. We don't allow swearing on the radio. Anyway, thanks Lovey.

• Anna Malan : Thanks, Dumi. Thanks for making me laugh, when there was nothing to laugh about.

• Anna Malan : It's not about blame. It's about - we're trying to find the truth. South Africans want peace and we're all making compromises.

  Langston Whitfield : What compromises have you whites made? Blacks can sit on your park benches now?