Classified People

Through a family that consists of people of various racial classifications Zauberman shows how apartheid, in utter absurdity, (de)forms life.

Central to this film are 91 year old Robert and 71 year old Doris. Robert, the son of a German mother and a black father, was born as a coloured person (the official designation for children from a mixed marriage). Because his first wife was white the children from that marriage were registered as being white. After his first wife's death Robert marries Doris who has been labelled, seemingly as a consequence of bureaucratic arbitrariness, as a black subject but could just as well have gone through life as a coloured woman.

This absurd situation makes that Roberts children visit their father and his wife (albeit under high tension) but do not want to be visited by them because black Doris' presence might put them in an unfavourable light with their neighbours.

Placed in a brief setting out of the policy of apartheid the story of Robert and Doris unfolds - two honest people who themselves do not think in terms of racial distinction at all - as a cruel and bitter result of apartheid.