Moffie

South Africa, 1981. Eighteen-year-old Nicholas is put on a train for compulsory military service and arrives at the training camp of a unit bound for the war on the Angolan border. The training exists to produce a particular kind of man as much as a soldier: loud, hardened, unafraid. Nicholas is gay and has to hide it. The word in the title is a heavy slur for gay men in Afrikaans. This is not a combat film; it stays inside the camp. Most of the violence comes not from the enemy but from his own sergeants and his own comrades. What Nicholas feels for another recruit is never stated, and beyond two looks and one night the story says only one thing: what hiding costs. Oliver Hermanus directed and co-wrote. The source is Andre Carl van der Merwe's novel drawn from his own service. Kai Luke Brummer has the lead. It had its world premiere on 4 September 2019 in the Horizons section of the Venice Film Festival. Conscription of white teenagers and the apartheid state defending itself sit inside the same story, and the film does not separate them. Who it is for: anyone who wants military narrative and cinema built on suppressed desire. Who it is not for: anyone with no tolerance for harsh scenes. The camp section is punishing, the pace is slow, and the ending closes without explaining itself.