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Based on the book by Marinovich and Silva, The Bang Bang Club tells the true story of these four young men, recounting their relationships with each other and the stresses, tensions and moral dilemmas of working in situations of extreme violence, pain and suffering.  It is also the story of the final demise of apartheid and the birth of a new South Africa.

Before the world knew who Kevin Carter, Greg Marinovich, Ken Oosterbroek and Joao Silva were, everyone knew their photographs. Before the world truly understood the horror of apartheid, its violence had been exposed by the work of these extraordinary young men. On September 15th, 1990, Marinovich took a series of photographs for Associated Press which included the image of an ANC supporter hacking at a burning man. (Inhlazane, Soweto, Sept 15, 1990). The photograph won Marinovich a Pultizer prize. And then, in May, 1994, Carter won the Pulitzer for a picture first published in The New York Times of a starving Sudanese girl who collapsed on her way to a feeding center while a vulture stalked her nearby. But on April 18, 1994, nine days before South African first democratic elections, the Bang Bang Club were covering the violence in Thokoza township when Oosterbroek was killed in the crossfire between hostel dwellers and a South African peacekeeping force. Marinovich was wounded that same day., Two months later, in July, Carter took his own life.

“I am depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners...I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.” — from Kevin Carter’s suicide note.