Portobello Productions and Penzance Films are pleased to announce that their new film, MOFFIE, directed by Oliver Hermanus, has been invited to premiere in the UK in the main competitive section in this year’s 63rd BFI London Film Festival (October 2 – 13).
This Best Film category is limited to 10 international films and ‘celebrates the highest creative achievements of British and international filmmakers, applauding extraordinary storytelling and inventive filmmaking’.
The festival held in London’s West End is the main annual British film event complete with red carpet premieres of the most significant movie offerings of the year.
‘MOFFIE is crisp and confident filmmaking, detailing the dehumanising brutality of conscripted military service in Apartheid-era South Africa. We think London audiences will get a real thrill out of the film, and it will be our pleasure to present it to them.’ said Tricia Tuttle, director of the BFI London Film Festival.
Next week on Wednesday (September 4) MOFFIE has its world premiere at the 76th Venice Film Festival where it will compete for a host of awards including the Queer Lion. The director Oliver Hermanus and film’s producers will lead a large delegation of actors and crew who will fly the flag for South African film-making at Europe’s oldest and most highly regarded film festival. For those cast attending this will be their very first international film festival experience.
‘It has been a very exciting month for everyone involved in MOFFIE. The response to the film from international film festivals has been extremely encouraging. We will take our first bow in Venice in just a few days and I am thrilled that so many members of the team – actors and crew, will be joining us there to represent our movie’ said MOFFIE director, Oliver Hermanus.
‘MOFFIE tells the little known story of how the Apartheid regime shamed and cauterised gay conscripts, militarised a whole generation of white boys through mandatory conscription, most of whom do not speak of this time in their lives. Perhaps MOFFIE can help stimulate a public discourse. Any society which aspires to justice and equality must have space for stories of pain and hurt of all to be told. We are very fortunate to have in Oliver Hermanus a rare South African director with the consummate sensitivity, intelligence and skill to deliver the film we hoped MOFFIE would be. I am enormously proud of it.’ Eric Abraham (producer – who produced the Academy award-winning films IDA (2014) and KOLYA (1996).
MOFFIE is based on the memoir of the same name by Andre Carl van der Merwe, produced by Eric Abraham and Jack Sidey, co-produced by Theresa Ryan-Van Graan and stars Kai-Luke Brummer, Ryan De Villiers, Matthew Vey, Stefan Vermaak and Hilton Pelser.
