Bill Nighy and Aimee Lou Wood give deeply affecting performances in this melancholy, understated tale of mortality and lost youth based on Kurosawa’s classic film, Ikiru
Sentiment and understatement meet in this beautifully melancholy (end-of-) life drama, based on Akira Kurosawa’s low-key 1952 gem, Ikiru. Elegantly directed by South African film-maker Oliver Hermanus (who helmed the 2019 adaptation of André Carl van der Merwe’s autobiographical Moffie) and boasting deeply affecting performances from national treasure Bill Nighy and rising star Aimee Lou Wood (regular of the hit Netflix series Sex Education), this deceptively gentle 50s-set film addresses weighty matters of life and death with a winning simplicity that is hard to resist.
Nighy brings his most austere face to the role of Mr Williams, a softly spoken bureaucrat working in London’s County Hall, where piles of paperwork accumulate in teetering towers of inaction and obfuscation. “We can keep it here for now,...
Sentiment and understatement meet in this beautifully melancholy (end-of-) life drama, based on Akira Kurosawa’s low-key 1952 gem, Ikiru. Elegantly directed by South African film-maker Oliver Hermanus (who helmed the 2019 adaptation of André Carl van der Merwe’s autobiographical Moffie) and boasting deeply affecting performances from national treasure Bill Nighy and rising star Aimee Lou Wood (regular of the hit Netflix series Sex Education), this deceptively gentle 50s-set film addresses weighty matters of life and death with a winning simplicity that is hard to resist.
Nighy brings his most austere face to the role of Mr Williams, a softly spoken bureaucrat working in London’s County Hall, where piles of paperwork accumulate in teetering towers of inaction and obfuscation. “We can keep it here for now,...
- 11/6/2022
- by Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
- The Guardian - Film News
Photo: ‘Moffie'/Amazon In Afrikaans, the “n-word” and the “f-word” are instead the “m-word” and the “k-word.” For the latter, see ‘Kaffir Boy’--for the former, see ‘Moffie’. Directed by Oliver Hermanus and based on André Carl van der Merwe’s 2006 autobiographical novel of the same name, ‘Moffie’ follows Nicholas van der Swart (Kai Luke Brummer), a gay, English-speaking teenager in South Africa, 1981, at the height of Apartheid and the war in Angola. The White minority of the time, which composed only 18% of South Africa’s population, held complete political control over the Black majority--in a brief sermon partway through the film, a fiery Afrikaner priest likens the struggle of the Whites and the Blacks to that of David and Goliath. From 1957-1993, all White males older than 16 were conscripted into the South African Defence Force (Sadf) for two compulsory years of service--’Moffie’ begins with Van der Swart coming of age.
- 4/12/2021
- by Daniel Choi
- Hollywood Insider - Substance & Meaningful Entertainment
There is no more delicious agony than the one felt when you’re sitting millimeters from your crush, wondering who’s going to make the first move, or if someone will at all. That unbearable, painful erotic tension is more or less the sustained mood of Oliver Hermanus’ shimmering and sensual military drama “Moffie,” which is Set in 1981 South Africa at the apex of the South African Border War, the film’s story of gay unrequited desire turns out to be a casing for something far more lethal in its marrow.
“Moffie” is Afrikaans slang for “faggot,” and the film, which is based on André Carl van der Merwe’s autobiographical novel of the same name, attempts a bold gesture in reclaiming epithet as an emblem of power. It’s 1981, South Africa, which means it’s not okay to be a “moffie”; effeminacy is a sign of weakness, and being gay is also illegal.
“Moffie” is Afrikaans slang for “faggot,” and the film, which is based on André Carl van der Merwe’s autobiographical novel of the same name, attempts a bold gesture in reclaiming epithet as an emblem of power. It’s 1981, South Africa, which means it’s not okay to be a “moffie”; effeminacy is a sign of weakness, and being gay is also illegal.
- 4/9/2021
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
The Venice festival premiere has been set for an April launch in the US.
IFC Films has bought North American rights to queer war film Moffie, from South African director Oliver Hermanus and UK independent Portobello Productions.
IFC has set the film, which opened in South Africa and the UK earlier this year, for a release in April, 2021.
Set against the backdrop of the Apartheid-era South African Border War and adapted from André Carl van der Merwe’s autobiographical novel by Hermanus and Portobello’s Jack Sidey, Moffie premiered at last year’s Venice film festival. Kai Luke Brummer, Ryan de Villiers,...
IFC Films has bought North American rights to queer war film Moffie, from South African director Oliver Hermanus and UK independent Portobello Productions.
IFC has set the film, which opened in South Africa and the UK earlier this year, for a release in April, 2021.
Set against the backdrop of the Apartheid-era South African Border War and adapted from André Carl van der Merwe’s autobiographical novel by Hermanus and Portobello’s Jack Sidey, Moffie premiered at last year’s Venice film festival. Kai Luke Brummer, Ryan de Villiers,...
- 12/18/2020
- by John Hazelton
- ScreenDaily
The Venice festival premiere has been set for an April launch in the US.
IFC Films has bought North American rights to queer war film Moffie, from South African director Oliver Hermanus and UK independent Portobello Productions.
IFC has set the film, which opened in South Africa and the UK earlier this year, for a release in April, 2021.
Set against the backdrop of the Apartheid-era South African Border War and adapted from André Carl van der Merwe’s autobiographical novel by Hermanus and Portobello’s Jack Sidey, Moffie premiered at last year’s Venice film festival. Kai Luke Brummer, Ryan de Villiers,...
IFC Films has bought North American rights to queer war film Moffie, from South African director Oliver Hermanus and UK independent Portobello Productions.
IFC has set the film, which opened in South Africa and the UK earlier this year, for a release in April, 2021.
Set against the backdrop of the Apartheid-era South African Border War and adapted from André Carl van der Merwe’s autobiographical novel by Hermanus and Portobello’s Jack Sidey, Moffie premiered at last year’s Venice film festival. Kai Luke Brummer, Ryan de Villiers,...
- 12/18/2020
- by John Hazelton
- ScreenDaily
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