Oliver Hermanus (born May, 26 1983) is a South African director and writer, best known known for his films Beauty (2011), The Endless River (2015), Moffie (2019), and Living (2022).
Hermanus was born in Cape Town and moved to Plettenberg Bay when he was three. He grew up in a house his father built in the hills, as his ‘coloured’ family was not permitted to live in the town centre under Apartheid. His parents were ANC activists.
His family buried banned books in the garden, ignored segregated beaches, and homeschooled his older siblings. They commuted to school nearby in the Eastern Cape.
Hermanus graduated with Bachelor of Arts in Film, Media, and Visual Studies from the University of Cape Town. He initially worked as press photographer for the Cape Argus newspaper. While working for “The Argus,” a mutual friend introduced Hermanus to German director Roland Emmerich who played crucial role in Hermanus’s career by giving him private scholarship to attend the London Film School, where he earned master’s degree in film.
Hermanus, who is openly gay, lives in Barrydale.
Emmerich helped Hermanus make his first feature film, Shirley Adams.
Films
Shirley Adams (2009)
Hermanus’s first film is the story of single mother raising her paraplegic son, who was injured during a gang fight. Hermanus got the idea for the film from his sister, an occupational therapist, who told him the story of a teenage boy paralyzed in a shooting incident.
Shirley Adams premiered at the Durban Film Fest where it received awards for Best South African Film, Best First Film, and Best Actress for Denise Newman.
The film was shown in competition at the Locarno Film Fest and later at Toronto Fest. The film also won awards for Best Film and Best Director at the 2009 South African Film and Television Awards.
Beauty
Beauty (known as Skoonheid in Afrikaans) was the fifth South African movie to be selected for competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Fest and the first in Afrikaans.
My Book:
Gay Directors, Gay Films? By Emanuel Levy (Columbia University Press, August 2015).
The film won the 2011 Queer Palm Award for best picture, and Hermanus won the 2012 South African Film and Television Award (SAFTA) for Best Director. Lead actor Deon Lotz won the 2012 SAFTA for Best Actor for his role in Beauty, as well as Best Actor at the Zurich Fest. Beauty was also part of the Official Selection 2011 for the Prize Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Fest.
Beauty relates the story of François, a married, closeted, middle-aged Afrikaner, who becomes obsessed with handsome young lawyer Christian (played by Charlie Keegan), one of his friends’ son
Beauty was critically praised for being “unvarnished study of the turbulence of the middle-aged male psyche, but it also addresses the current Afrikaner condition.” The film’s original title, Skoonheid, “. . . means ‘beauty’ in Afrikaans but literally translates as ‘cleanliness’ . . . is a story about the ugly truth of confronting parts of yourself that you hate and try to suppress.
The film’s subject matter and visuals were deemed by some critics as “off-putting” and “graphic.” Hermanus noted about the film’s controversy: “The debates on the gay issues are amazing, but I’m still yearning for the debate to start on other issues, like repression and racial tensions.”
Hermanus was guest of honor at “Side by Side,” an international festival of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender film in Moscow in April 2011, where he presented Beauty.
The Endless River
In 2015, Hermanus wrote and directed his third film, The Endless River, the first South African film to compete for the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Fest.
The film is set in the small town of Riviersonderend in the Overberg region of South Africa and relates the story of a French expatriate and a small-town waitress who form a bond after the brutal murder of his family on a farm. Hermanus explained, “I wanted to combine in my film a place I’m familiar with; the story of violence happening in South Africa.”
Moffie
Moffie had its world premiere at the 2019 Venice Film Fest. The film is based on autobiographical novel by South African writer André Carl van der Merwe, relating the author’s experiences serving in the South African military during the Apartheid-era war in Angola.
The lead character, Nicholas van der Swart (played by Kai Luke Brümmer), and fellow recruit Stassen (Ryan de Villiers), share mutual attraction but they must make their sexuality invisible to avoid being viciously humiliated and brutalized.
The film also received BFI nomination for Best Film and won the Jury Prize at the 2020 Dublin Film Fest.
Living (2022)
Living, his first non-South African film, starring Bill Nighy and Aimee Lou Wood, was written by the Japanese–British author Kazuo Ishiguro and is an adaptation of the 1952 Japanese film Ikiru.
Living premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Fest and screened 2022 Venice Film Fest. The film received British Independent Film Award and British Academy Film Award nominations, as well as multiple acting nominations for Nighy. Nighy and Ishiguro then received Oscar Award nominations in the acting and adapted screenplay categories respectively, making Living Hermanus’ first film to receive Oscar nominations.
The History of Sound
In 2021, Hermanus adapted Ben Shattuck’s short story starring Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal. Hermanus had developed the script for The History of Sound with Shattuck himself during COVID-19 lockdown.
The film had its world premiere at the main competition of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Palme d’Or, marking Hermanus first film to do so.
Television
For his first television project, Hermanus directed and exec-produced Mary & George, a miniseries starring Julianne Moore as Mary Villiers, Countess of Buckingham for Sky Studios in the UK and AMC in the US.
Filmography
2009 Shirley Adams Debut film
2011 Beauty Queer Palm winner
2015 The Endless River
2019 Moffie
2022 Living
2025 The History of Sound
Television
2024 Mary & George Miniseries, episodes 1–3.
