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The idea that a black girl could be raised as white in ’50s South Africa sounds like a pigment of someone’s twisted imagination.

The fact that Skin is based on a true story, then, gives added heft to Anthony Fabian’s moving if sometimes stodgy account of Sandra Laing’s 30-year struggle to be accepted either side of the Apartheid divide.

Torn between her rigid Afrikaner dad (Sam Neill) and her black boyfriend, Sandra (Sophie Okonedo) finds it impossible to locate truth and reconciliation.

Only the conventional storytelling detracts from a film that serves both as poignant family saga and potent allegory.

Neil Smith is a freelance film critic and writer who contributes regularly to Heat, SFX and Screen International. He's a long-time member of the London Film Critics’ Circle and was a contributing editor at Total Film for many years.