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<\/p>\n\u2018Inxeba\u2019 (The Wound), a gay love story told entirely in isiXhosa, starring musician and singer Nakhane and produced by Urucu Media, has been chosen as South Africa\u2019s entry into next year\u2019s 90th Academy Awards, now known officially as The Oscars, in the category of best foreign language film.<\/p>\n
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Producers walked out of the press and industry screening at 11am on the first day of the Sundance Film Festival this year, where the film premiered in the World Dramatic Competition Category, with an offer for global licence rights to the film from the biggest VoD platform in North America. \u201cThey were the first ones to talk about Foreign Language Oscars\u00ae potential,\u201d comments producer Elias Ribeiro, \u201cbut they did not confirm anything in writing and wanted to restrict the theatrical life of the film to enable the film to be a novelty on their platform. Saying no to them was one of the toughest decisions we ever had to make, but it paid off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Backed by one of the leading French sales companies, Pyramide International, the producers started in January to work on the positioning of the film as an Academy Awards\u00ae contender. To date the film has found a home in more than 30 countries between distributors and broadcasters, proving its international appeal.<\/p>\n
“Locally, the film took home two awards at the longest running festival in southern Africa, The Durban International Film Festival, for Best Actor and Best South African Director,\u201d says producer Cait Pansegrouw. \u201cIt was the best-performing film at both of its qualifying run cinemas in September. It\u2019s a film that was five years in the making, from inception, and it is one that all South Africans can be proud of”.<\/p>\n
In August, The New York Times listed \u2018The Wound\u2019 on their Critic\u2019s Pick List during its theatrical run in the USA, and most recently The Economist listed the film under \u2018What is the World Watching\u2019. \u2018Inxeba\u2019 is being represented in the US by Kino Lorber, one of the world\u2019s top distributors of the finest art house and international films. Variety already picked up on the film\u2019s promise, by announcing the South African entry yesterday calling it “An unflinching examination of sexuality, masculinity and cultural identity\u201d. The film has won 12 International Awards thus far, three them in the United States.<\/p>\n
Peter Kwele, Head of Marketing and Communications at the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) congratulated the creators of \u2018Inxeba\u2019, saying, “It is important for the content we produce to disrupt and propel audiences to introspect and the film\u2019s focus on important aspects of our culture and traditions, while addressing topical issues of identity, masculinity and sexuality does just that. I hope that we as South Africans will engage constructively around these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Inxeba\u2019 follows in the footsteps of \u2018Moonlight\u2019, which won last years\u2019 Oscar\u00ae for Best Film.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2019Inxeba\u2019 is well positioned to secure a nomination and is now fundraising for an American campaign to ensure the best possible visibility for the film,\u201d says Helen Kuun, CEO of Indigenous Film Distribution, which is distributing the film in South Africa.<\/p>\n
“To be honest, this would not be a satisfying moment if it wasn\u2019t for the overwhelming love and goodwill we\u2019ve received from South African (and in particular isiXhosa) audiences in the last few weeks,\u201d said director John Trengove. \u201cGoing into this, we were committed to making the kind of film that wasn\u2019t being made in our industry. We told a story we felt was urgent, and we created the kind of male characters that we think are sorely lacking on our screens. We never once thought we\u2019d make a crowd-pleasing film, let alone one that would represent South Africa as an Oscar\u00ae submission. I hope this encourages other local filmmakers to take bigger risks and to try to express something of our uniquely South African experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Previous submissions to this category from South Africa includes \u2018Skoonheid\u2019 (Beauty), \u2018Four Corners\u2019, \u2018Elelwani\u2019, \u2018Noem My Skollie\u2019 and \u2018Little One\u2019 amongst others.<\/p>\n
\u2018Inxeba\u2019 will release nationwide in South Africa in February 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u2018Inxeba\u2019 (The Wound), a gay love story told entirely in isiXhosa, starring musician and singer Nakhane and produced by Urucu Media, has been chosen as South Africa\u2019s entry into next year\u2019s 90th Academy Awards, now known officially as The Oscars, in the category of best foreign language film. Producers walked out of the press and… Continue reading Inxeba (The Wound) Is South Africa’s Entry For Next Years 90th Academy Awards<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-5141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","tag-academy-awards","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}