Inxeba (2017)

- PICKED BY HANNEKE-
March 2021

The South African 2017 film Inxeba (The Wound) revolves around ulwaluko, the male initiation rites of the amaXhosa, for which young men return to their ancestral villages in order to be circumcised and prepared for the responsibilities of adult life. In the film, Xolani, a factory worker in Johannesburg, returns to the mountains of the Eastern Cape each year to act as a caregiver in this ritual, also using the opportunity to be intimate with his fellow-caregiver Vija, who is married and has a wife and children.

In its focus on the lethal tensions between sexuality, tradition, generational differences and queer identity, Inxeba shows what happens when several pastorals are projected on a single natural space.