Sidney (12A)
Directed by Reginald Hudlin
 

BORN two months premature, “I was not expected to live,” states the legendary Sidney Poitier who lived to the age of 94 and broke the mould by becoming the first ever black man to win an Oscar for best actor, refusing to play demeaning and subservient roles on screen.

Talking straight to camera, he describes his poverty-stricken childhood and his life-long experiences in this powerful and revealing documentary about his life, his work — in front of and behind the camera — and his legacy as an actor and activist at the centre of Hollywood and the civil rights movement.

Produced by Oprah Winfrey with the collaboration of the Poitier family, and directed by Reginald Hudlin, the film features frank interviews with Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Spike Lee, Halle Berry as well as Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand to name a few. Plus his children, his wife and his exes.

Also featuring an interview Poitier gave Oprah (a massive fan) a number of years ago, it is heartwrenching to hear in his own words his first experiences with racism when he arrived from the Bahamas as a confident 15-year-old in Miami to stay with his older brother.

Up until then, he had no idea what racism was. Although it isn’t a warts-and-all biopic, it is insightful and gripping and quite cinematic.

You also get the sense of the man who always tried to emulate his parents’ character to varying degrees. It also details his fascinating lifelong friendship and rivalry with American singer/actor Harry Belafonte, who was accidentally responsible for him being discovered by Hollywood.

What comes across loud and clear is how Poitier always knew who he was from an early age and how he wasn’t defined by his colour.

As his character states to his father in 1967’s Guess Who is Coming to Dinner: “You think of yourself as a coloured man and I think of myself as a man.”

Redford says: “He had a voice and he had every right to use it. He had earned that voice,” while Spike Lee states: “Sidney had to take a lot of slings and arrows for an entire race.”

It is a shame that Poitier, who died in January this year, did not live to see Sidney.

In select cinemas and on Apple TV +