This year’s edition of The Durban International Film Festival in South Africa was a pure cinematic treat. I attended master classes with Burkina Faso film legend Gaston Kabore and surf film legend Jack McCoy, hung out with some of my favourite filmmakers, and saw some truly great films from around the world. Of these, one of the highlights was the African premiere of 27 year-old South African Oliver Hermanus’ latest feature, “Skoonheid” (Beauty.) The film made Cannes history earlier this year: It was the first Afrikaans film to screen at the festival and the first official French/ South African co- production ever. It went on to win the Queer Palm at Cannes and in Durban it won Best South African Feature.

“Skoonheid” (trailer above) tells the story of a middle aged Afrikaner man, Francois van Heerden (superbly played by Deon Lotz) who through painstakingly compartmentalizing his life, suppresses his sexual preference for men. Beneath his Calvinist family man façade lies a deeply unhappy and frustrated man. He engages in secret sexual orgies on a farm with other Afrikaans men who are also hiding their sexual preferences. Some of his peers are plainly in denial: “No gays and no coloureds allowed!” says one of the characters as he chases a member of their group away who had brought a brown skinned gay youth along. However, desperate sex with other suppressed men doesn’t seem to bring him any real happiness or even relief. He is in a permanent state of quiet internal conflict. He feels disenfranchised and unsafe in the new South Africa. He is like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. When he has an encounter with an old friend’s  son at a wedding, he is mesmerized by his beauty, and his grip over his life begins to slip. We undergo a journey with him: as Hermanus puts it, “a journey that is conflicted and laced with self loathing.” Both terrifying and fascinating, “Skoonheid” is uncharted territory in the South African film terrain. I caught with up Oliver Hermanus in Cape Town to discuss the film.

You won the Queer Palm at Cannes, you just won best South African Film at Durban, and you won the same award for your first film a few years ago, “Shirley Adams” (a moving portrait of a Cape Flats mother caring for her newly disabled son.) People are describing you as the new auteur in South African cinema.

Is there an old auteur? (laughs.)

How do you react to that kind of title?

I think we look for those kinds of titles because in Europe they have those auteurs so we should also have auteurs. I don’t think it means anything. I think from my point of view, how I make films, it’s not an auteur process because it’s collaborative. So I think that’s an interesting sign, because South Africans are thinking, “because he’s not making what we get from other parts of the world, he’s an auteur.” But I wouldn’t want to argue that what I’m doing is extremely avant garde or the voice of a single being. I feel like the way that I work is very normal, contextually. When I think of auteur, I think of Godard. I think of someone who, regardless of what the movies about, he’ll just make it. Some of the movies are terrible and some are good. Consistent work is what makes an auteur. Like Woody Allen; every 16 months he must make something. Even if its trash. I don’t think I would do that. I would rather make a film once every three years, in the hope that it will be stronger.

How would you describe the filmmaking landscape in at the moment in South Africa?

I’m very excited by it, I think there is a lot going on, more films, more of an audience, so I think it’s the best time to be involved in the industry because we are busy. There are more filmmakers, there’s more international attention… I would describe it as being in its teething stage. It’s growing.

It’s also inspiring to see guys like you coming up, seeing what you’re doing.

Although, I feel what I do has more of a European appreciation than a South African appreciation. The expectation from South Africans for what films are about is very limiting. They never assume there are other versions of telling stories, they just assume there is a right and a wrong. Which is a sign of us not being a very advanced film audience.

In that light, how was your first film, “Shirley Adams,” received by the South African audience?

It wasn’t seen by many South Africans. Women in their 40’s liked it because they could identify with the main character. But a lot of people never saw a story told in that way, so they were bogged down by the stylistic conventions in the film. With Skoonheid we tried to so something that wasn’t as visually challenging but in terms of content, more challenging.

What are your influences?

It changes from film to film. In “Skoonheid,” a big reference for us was Hitchcock. The protagonist is a “negative” character, like in “Psycho.” You’re with the bad guy, or bad guy sometimes. The cinemascope aspect is also Hitchcock. Our opening scene is Hitchcock, using a zoom and a pan at the same time. For the visual style and colour, it was just everything that wasn’t “Shirley Adams”! “Death in Venice“ by Thomas Mann was also an influence. More the book than the film. The film is quite dated.

One of the most interesting things about “Skoonheid” is that as a Coloured or Black director you are telling a White Afrikaner story. Historically in South Africa, it’s been the other way around.

We are definitely experiencing the reaction to that. I had two well known South African gay socialites, no names mentioned (laughs); hustled their way into a press screening of the film, and they reacted very badly to it. They called a journalist who I know very well to try and influence her review of the film.  She then referred to me… when I met with her I realized that the biggest problem they had with the film was that I was telling that story. However they had no problem with me making Shirley Adams (in which the lead character is Cape Coloured.) They really appreciated “Shirley Adams” because it was “those people over there.” I think ownership over content is a big South African issue.  People want context, they want to know what connects you to the story. The first question I’ve been getting all week is “where does this story come from? “ What that question really means is “are you Afrikaans?”

The lead role was superbly played by Deon Lotz. Did you go through a long process before you decided on him?

It was actually Didier (the French producer) who picked him out, He came and looked at a bunch of pictures and said, “he looks the closest!” We definitely saw a fair share of South African actors. I was convinced by Deon based on his second casting session.

You are aiming Skoonheid at the mainstream Afrikaans market, who are used to consuming teen romcoms and family dramas. How do you think people are going to respond?

Deon Lotz has become such an Afrikaner icon that the fact that he’s in it, endorses it in a way, and yet he plays the reason why they may not like it! He’s such a familiar face to Afrikaans audiences and they really like him, and they just saw him in this huge theatre production, which five million people went to see. In it he plays a heroic father figure…it couldn’t have been a better time for us to release a film with him in it. I love the fact that Deon decided to do this (Skoonheid) and that he did it so well. That’s going to disarm a lot of people. If we had someone else, it would have been a lot harder.

“Skoonheid” opens in South Africa this weekend.

For more on the film, visit the film’s website.

Follow Oliver on Twitter @OliverHermanus