Weekly Mail Film Festival in Johannesburg. Brando's performance in the movie earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and he received the Best Actor Award at the Tokyo Film Festival. For her outstanding cinematic achievement, Palcy received the "Orson Welles Award" in Los Angeles. Box office A Dry White Season earned $3.8 million in the United States, against a budget of $9 million. It earned £334,314 in the UK. Critical reception The film received mostly positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 82% of 72 critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 7.4 out of 10. Brando, in his first film since 1980, was particularly praised for his small but key role as human rights attorney Ian McKenzie. Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert called A Dry White Season "an effective, emotional, angry, subtle movie." The Washington Post's Rita Kempley wrote that "A Dry White Season is political cinema so deeply felt it attains a moral grace. A bitter medicine, a painful reminder, it grieves for South Africa as it recounts the atrocities of apartheid. Yes, it is a story already told on a grander scale, but never with such fervor." And Rolling Stone's Peter Travers wrote that director Palcy, "a remarkable talent, has kept her undeniably powerful film ablaze with ferocity and feeling." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare "A+" grade on an A+ to F scale. Awards and nominations See also English-language accents in film – South African References External links Movie stills A Dry White Season: Justice Against the Law an essay by Jyoti Mistry at the Criterion Collection 1989 films 1989 crime drama films American drama films American courtroom films 1980s English-language films English-language South African films Apartheid films Films based on South African novels Films scored by Dave Grusin Films set in South Africa Films set in 1976 Films shot at Pinewood Studios Films shot in Zimbabwe South African drama films Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films Films directed by Euzhan Palcy 1980s American films