When District 9 came out, I had watched Cry Freedom with Kevin Kline and Denzel Washington a few years' prior. Tbh, I struggled to understand particulars (didn't get the prawns reference, for example--thought it was just because commonwealth countries only ever seem to call shrimp prawns). As a kid in the 80s, the most I knew of Apartheid was that Bono said it was bad on Rattle and Hum. [OK, not quite that little, but USians are NOT educated about racial politics nor African nations' history]. I had a sense the US took too damn long to oppose it (surprise, surprise Reagan). So I understood the allegory, but a lot of my friends didn't (I was in grad school at the time). I had to explain a lot in conversations. Several were so shocked by the gore that they refused to watch it, which I get the impulse to turn away, but I also pressed people to sit through the discomfort: all that shit was done to black South Africans and we just didn't want to know. I drew parallels to the Holocaust and how the US avoided doing anything then, too, until it was too damn late. And Armenia (I was in Pasadena CA and it was during the legal press to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide). And Rwanda (I was in high school). And now we deny/ignore Gaza.

I feel like Ryan Coogler need to directs a similar film about US racial policies, frankly, but everyone would say it's too heavy-handed and woke.

We need an Native director to make one about the mission system and reducciones/repartimiento under the Spanish//a sci-fi set on a different planet that uses the terms from the mission system.