Belle (2013 film)

Belle is a 2013 British period drama film directed by Amma Asante, written by Misan Sagay and produced by Damian Jones. It stars Gugu MbathaRaw, Tom Wilkinson, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, Sam Reid, Matthew Goode, Emily Watson, Sarah Gadon, Tom Felton and James Norton.

Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay was born in 1761, the natural daughter of Maria Belle, an enslaved African woman in the West Indies, and Captain Sir John Lindsay, a British Royal Navy officer. After the death of Didos mother, Captain Lindsay takes Dido from the slums of the West Indies in 1765 and entrusts her to his uncle William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice, and his wife, Elizabeth, who live at Kenwood House, an estate in Hampstead outside London. Lord and Lady Mansfield raise Dido as a free gentlewoman, together with their niece Lady Elizabeth Murray, who came to live with them after her mother died and her father remarried. When the two cousins reach adulthood, the Mansfields commission an oil portrait of their two greatnieces, but Dido is unhappy about sitting for it as she is worried that it will portray her as a subordinate, like other portraits she has seen depicting aristocrats with black servants. Didos father dies and leaves her the generous sum of 2,000 a year, enough to make her an heiress. Lady Elizabeth, by contrast, will have no income from her father, whose son from his new wife has been named his sole heir. Arrangements are made for Elizabeth to have her coming out to society, but Lord and Lady Mansfield believe no gentleman will agree to marry Dido because of her mixedrace status, so while she will travel to London with her cousin, she will not be out to society.Lord Mansfield agrees to take a vicars son, John Davinier, into an apprenticeship for law. In 1783, Mansfield hears the case of Gregson v. Gilbert, regarding the payment of an insurance claim, for slaves killed when thrown overboard by the captain of a slaveship an event now known as the Zong massacre. Dido helps her uncle with his correspondence and after John tells her about the Zong case, she begins sneaking correspondence to him which he believes will advance the cause of the abolitionists. Lord Mansfield and John have a disagreement on the main issue of the cas

Source: Wikipedia