The much anticipated SA drama Moffie premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday and received rave reviews from the international press following the screening.
Variety’s Guy Lodge said in his review : ”Vast, tacit emotion swims to the surface throughout, up to a coda of such suspended, silently symphonic yearning, it fair takes your breath away. Hermanus’ young ensemble plays it with sensitivity and skill, but this is a director’s triumph first and foremost: a dogs-of-war hell ride of “Full Metal Jacket” intensity, a queer coming-of-age meditation with something of “Moonlight’s” salt-on-skin tenderness, and a scorching evocation of South Africa’s Border War shame with no major precedent in a national cinema still working through its blind spots. “Moffie” achieves some hard grace in under two hours: Never has the titular slur borne such beauty.”
Watch the trailer right here. Directed by local filmmaker Oliver Hermanus, and based on the novel with the same name by André-Carl van der Merwe, it tells the story of a gay conscript who embarks on his military service in South Africa in 1981.
