Even before the passing of Nelson Mandela, the film that depicts his life, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom had broken box-office records in South Africa. The film opens in various European countries over the next fortnight and in Britain on 3 January 2014; audiences are likely to go to it for an insight into the man that reaches beyond the news features and the eulogies.The poignant timing of the film’s release highlights the curious role of the biopic in ­cinema. Does it seek to inform or illuminate, to propagandise or simply dramatise? In this case it is a UK/South Africa co-­production with a screenplay based on Mandela’s own book: producer Anant Singh, who first interviewed Mandela while he was still a prisoner, bought the rights a decade and a half ago. The screen a