Oscar No 2 for Eric

A South African human rights activist, who was banned by the apartheid government, has walked away with his second Oscar.

Eric Abraham co-produced the Polish film Ida, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He was also the producer of the Czech film Kolya, which won an Oscar in the same category in 1996.

"It's wonderful when the underdog triumphs. [The movie is] a small, short, black and white film in Polish about two women who go on a road trip to learn about who they are and where they come from," said Abraham yesterday.

"Ida seems to have touched people across the barriers of language and culture in over 30 countries so far and restores my faith in the appetite for films that make us think and feel about the human condition. South Africa has so many such stories waiting to be told on film."

Abraham is the founder of the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town, a film and theatre producer and the owner of a production company called Portobello.

According to the theatre's website, he is a former journalist and "human rights activist banned and house-arrested in 1976 and exiled for 15 years".

Ida is set in the 1960s in Poland, where a woman, orphaned during the German occupation in World War 2, is about to take her vows to become a Catholic nun.

She discovers that her parents were Jewish and goes on a road trip to learn more about her family.

The film was written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski and stars Agata Kulesza, Dawid Ogrodnik and Agata Trzebuchowska.

Pawlikowski's acceptance speech was met with applause on Sunday night when he said: "We make a film about silence and withdrawing from the world and the need for contemplation - and here we are, at the epicentre of world noise and attention. Fantastic - life is full of surprises."