WITHOUT THE KING (Michael Skolnik, U.S.). 84 minutes. Monday (April 23), 9:45 pm Wednesday (April 25), 4:15 pm, Isabel Bader. Rating: NNNN Rating: NNNN
Swaziland is Africa’s last absolute monarchy, and a nation at a volatile crossroads. This tiny country of 1.1 million has the world’s highest rate of HIV/AIDS, and 70 per cent of its people survive on less than Sally Struthers asks of us while its ruler, King Mswati III, is busy buying Porsches and private jets and suppressing the push for democratic reform.
Thanks to unprecedented access to the royal family, including the out-of-touch monarch and his eldest daughter, a would-be rapper whose My Super Sweet 16-ish eyes are opened when she goes to school in California, and to rebels who talk of not being able to afford guns, so machetes will have to do, we become witness to an all-too-familiar-sounding revolution in the making.
