Four Corners: August 19

Next Monday night Four Corners profiles New Zealand-based filmmaker Robyn Paterson’s search for her childhood friend caught up in the turmoil of conflict in Zimbabwe.

What do you do when your best friend is lost to you in a tide of violence and cruelty? Do you search across continents to find her? That is the story of filmmaker Robyn Paterson and her friend Mercy.

At the age of eight, Robyn Paterson greeted Comrade Robert Mugabe with flowers as he stepped from a plane at a Zimbabwe air force base. She and her best friend Mercy were the poster children for the new Zimbabwe.

Robyn was pale skinned, Mercy was dark. The girls were intended to be a symbol that all was well in the independent nation. But events of the day hid a more brutal reality. Only a few miles away, Mercy’s Matabele people were being massacred by Mugabe’s special forces.

Robyn and her family were forced to flee the country fearing for their safety, as Mugabe’s security forces took hold.

A generation later, Robyn begins a high risk ground search across Zimbabwe – desperate to find out what happened to her friend. Along the way she faces the dangers of filming in a country hostile to media, the shock of what is still going on behind closed doors and the stark differences that she and Mercy have come to symbolise. Ultimately, her search takes her on an epic journey.

It is a gripping, heart wrenching story of two women, and a very different look at the legacy of Robert Mugabe.

Monday 19th August at 8.30pm on ABC1.