Film recommendation: Moffie
This beautifully made, powerful drama set in apartheid-era South Africa about a young gay man doing military service addresses the dangers of binary thinking, at personal and national levels. This film is set in the early 1980s in South Africa, when the minority white government was facing conflict on the southern Angolan border while battling the threat of communism and its terror of an uprising by the majority black population. Like all young men over 16, Nicholas must complete two years of compulsory military service to defend the apartheid regime. We follow him during his brutal training and into battle. It is initially unclear whether Nicholas is gay, or just cut from softer cloth than many of his contemporaries. But when a flicker of understanding between him and the rebellious...
