Palcy's Season

Martinique-born director Euzhan Palcy has a Cleopatra-like helmet of shoulder-length dreadlocks and an unbeatable set of cinematic credentials. François Truffaut was her mentor, Robert Redford and David Puttnam are huge fans, and her first film, Sugar Cane Alley, was cradled by critics worldwide, winning both Sil ver Lion honors at the Venice Film Festival and France's coveted Cesar. But the thirty-two-year-old Palcy, the daughter of a Caribbean pineapple-factory manager, tops herself this fall with MGM's release of her anti-apartheid powerhouse, A Dry White Season. Shot on location in Zimbabwe and London on the shoestring (by Hollywood standards) budget of $9 million, the movie stars Marlon Brando (whom she lured out of nearly a decade's hibernation to work for no money), Donald Sutherland, Susan Sarandon, and Fugard favorite Zakes Mokae. Palcy's searing adaptation of Andre Brink's novel shows all the facets and all the faces of the rainbow of South Africa, but what looms largest for the probable Oscar nominee? Marlon Brando's back: "I love it," she says with a swoon. "Any other filmmaker would jump and have a tight shot on his face, but even when you show his back, he fills the screen and he's powerful."

A. J.