“Skoonheid,” the new film by South African director Oliver Hermanus will be screened in the Un Certain Regard section of this year’s edition of the Cannes Film Festival (starting next month). He is in good company. Check the Cannes site to see who else got invited.
The film is also the first Afrikaans film to be included in Cannes Film Festival’s official program. The film–the title translates as “Beauty”– “… tells the story of Francois van Heerden, a mid-40s, white, Afrikaans-speaking family man living in Bloemfontein, who has become devoid of any care or concern for his own measure of happiness, and so convinced of his ill-fated existence, that he is wholly unprepared when a chance encounter unravels his clean, controlled life.”
I like the film language of Hermanus (he studied film at the University of Cape Town, UC Santa Barbara and the London Film School), so I’m looking forward to seeing it whenever. Hermanus’ debut film, “Shirley Adams,” which I saw at the New York African Film Festival last year, a claustrophobic film about the desperate lives of a working class woman and her disabled son, is definitely worth a look.
Sources: Film Contact, Festival du Cannes, Screen Daily
I am so proud of Oliver Hermanus. I knew him as a little boy in Port Elizabeth when he was about 8 years old. If possible, I have lost contact with the family and would like to get in contact with his mother, Beryl.
Anelle Zondagh
I saw the film Beauty last night on netflix. I’m wondering if Mister Hermanus is influenced by Bergman there seems to be a Bergmanesque quality about both films (Shirley Adams)..An emotional roller coaster of angst..a tour du force…Race relations seem to serves as a frame work for both films without saying it..Too much..like the Southern United States nearly fifty years after the civil rights movement. His almost if not, mastery of emotional and physcological pain can be felt, like Bergman, from each frame..and the actors performances were stellar. Not a filmmaker for everyone, but a very powerful one. Beauty..showed what happens when homophobia slowly destroys the human spirit. I applaude you Mister Hermanus! Your youth belies your vision…