“In The Wound, being a man isn’t about being a naturally dominant person, but about learning to submit yourself to a patriarchal model that demands heterosexuality,” Brett Pardy writes in a recent review for Seventh Row. Directed by John Tengrove, Inxeba (The Wound) is a South African coming-of-age film that tells the story of Xolani, a gay factory worker played by musician and actor Nakhane Touré, who travels to Eastern Cape to oversee the Xhosa initiation process only to have his secret discovered by one defiant initiate.
The film explores masculinity and homophobia, and the LGBTQ+ romance that develops during the Xhosa manhood ritual. According to HuffPost SA, the film has now been uploaded to Netflix, the world’s biggest streaming service. Though the news going around is that Inxeba is the first South African film to be on the streaming platform, HuffPost SA have corrected this misinformation by adding a footnote to the original article published on the site, indicating other South African films that preceded Inxeba.
We wrote about Inxeba as one of the top LGBT films from African filmmakers to look out for in 2018 here.
Embroiled in controversy due to the depiction of homosexuality, several screenings of Inxeba was cancelled due to violent threats. Despite this, the producers have claimed that the film was one of the most popular at cinemas over the weekend and was not going to be removed entirely. You can watch the trailer below, or just head over to Netflix.
When Bernard Dayo isn’t writing about pop culture, he’s watching horror movies and reading comics and trying to pretend his addiction to Netflix isn’t a serious condition.
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