For screenwriter Shawn Slovo, the subject of apartheid-era South Africa is a deeply personal one.

In 1988, her acclaimed film A World Apart told the story of her mother, Ruth First, the African National Congress supporter detained without trial for 117 days in 1963 and killed by a letter bomb two decades later. Shawn's father was Joe Slovo, the anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela described at his funeral as "a leader, a patriot, a father, a fighter, a negotiator, an internationalist, a theoretician and an organiser".

Ms Slovo's new film, Hot Stuff, is described as a politically charged thriller about a peaceful man driven to terrorism in apartheid-era South Africa. Like A World Apart, it will mix politics and drama.

Produced by the UK's Working Title films, it will be shot by Philip Noyce, the Australian director of The Quiet American and Rabbit-Proof Fence.

Tim Bevan, Working Title's co-chairman, said the film's relevance was wider than South Africa.

"We're not setting out to make a film about apartheid; we're making a film about a peaceful man who is driven to the point where he becomes a terrorist," Mr Bevan told trade magazine Screen International.