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OF

REEL AFFIRMATIONS XTRA: Our Monthly Film Series

FEATURING SOUTH AFRICA'S OFFICIAL OSCAR SELECTION FOR BEST FOREIGN FILM

AND

THE QUEER PALM AWARD AT THE 2011 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

BEAUTY (SKOONHEID)

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Winner of the Queer Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival and South Africa’s official entry to the Academy Awards, Beauty, unabashedly reveals the social tumult of Oliver Hermanus’s homeland with the story of one Afrikaner’s.

Francois is a middle aged, successfully self-employed businessman, a husband and father and the product of his repressive, conservative, rural Bloemfontein society, where apartheid was the rule.  His mundane life fosters not only an isolated and morose existence, but also an emotionally toxic one. While perfecting realizing who he is, he despises himself for it.  He creates a sort of psychological apartheid, where his nature and his actions are separated. 

While at his daughter’s wedding reception, Francois catches a glimpse of Christian, the young, handsome son of an old friend. An attraction develops into an obsession. Christian approaches Francois for money to back a business venture.  They meet in more cosmopolitan Cape Town, where Francois abruptly implodes. Deon Lotz carries the film by creating real man of complexity and emotional intrigue. Can unrequited desire and loss be reconciled with the   unobtainable beauty of liberated, youthful promise?