En Angleterre au XVIIIe siècle, Dido Belle est une enfant métisse, fille illégitime d'un capitaine de la Royal Navy et d'une esclave. Pour éviter le scandale, elle est confiée à lord Mansfield et à sa femme, qui s'occupent de son éducation. Belle devient l'amie inséparable d'Elizabeth, une nièce des Mansfield. Même si elle jouit de certains privilèges, sa couleur de peau est un obstacle qui l'empêche de participer à la vie de la bonne société. Plus tard, la jeune fille s'éprend de John Davinier, un jeune avocat idéaliste. Ensemble, ils vont amener lord Mansfield, le président de la Haute Cour d'Angleterre, à mettre fin à l'esclavage dans son pays...
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Court métrageTranscription
00:00Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada
00:30What is right can never be impossible
00:33What has she been named?
00:35Dido Belle Lindsay
00:37She takes your name
00:38I am not ashamed
00:39We will call her Dido
00:41Elizabeth was in much need of a companion
00:46And that is what we shall say when questions are asked
00:48We shall be receiving visitors for dinner
00:53Why are you not dying with your family ever?
00:55Because that is not correct
00:57May I present the second of my two nieces
00:59Miss Dido Lindsay
01:00I find her repulsive
01:02Papa, how may I be too high in rank to dine with the servants
01:06And too low to dine with my family?
01:08Though I understand she is kept under interesting rules
01:12She raises questions
01:13Would you do me the honour of taking some air with me?
01:16Don't you care what people will say?
01:18What should anyone say?
01:20I've no idea she'll be so black
01:22One does not make a wife of the rare and exotic
01:25Does she still have a tongue?
01:27I have a tongue
01:28Though yours explains well enough why I may not marry your son
01:31My greatest misfortune would be to marry into a family
01:34Who would carry me as their shame
01:36I've enabled every rule of convention
01:41So that you would know exactly where you belong
01:43I don't know that I find myself anywhere
01:45Do you love her?
01:47As though she were created of you and me
01:50What of your mother?
01:51I know very little of her other than the colour she has given me
01:54Then at least you know she was beautiful
01:56You would risk your position for a man without name
01:59Laws that allow us to diminish the humanity of anybody are not laws
02:07He speaks a voice for people who do not have one
02:10If I had your choice, I would choose the man I loved
02:13There are rules in place which dictate how we live
02:16You break every rule when it matters enough, Papa
02:18I am the evidence
02:21I am the evidence