Accolades

Inxeba received 19 awards at 44 festivals worldwide; received eight South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTA) nominationsm and won five including Best Feature Film, Best Actor in a Feature Film, Best Supporting Actor in a Feature Film, Best Achievement in Directing in a Feature Film, and Best Achievement in Editing in a Feature Film ^[22] and was short-listed for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category.^[16][23]

Controversy

The film has been accused of portraying secretive initiation rituals. However, other media covering the same topic, like Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom, have not received similar criticism, leading to accusations that complaints about the film are instead motivated by homophobia.^[13][16][18]

A day after the film's release in South Africa, cinemas in the Eastern Cape province were forced to cancel screenings of the film and offer refunds because of protests, intimidation and vandalism. Nu Metro Cinemas subsequently cancelled screenings countrywide, while Ster-Kinekor continued to show it outside of the Eastern Cape. The film's producers filed complaints with the Human Rights Commission and the Commission for Gender Equality over threats and violence.^[16][23] Crew and cast received death threats and were forced to go into hiding.^[4]

Reclassification

The film was initially classified as 16LS by South Africa's Film and Publication Board (FPB), but was later reclassified as X18 by the FPB's Appeal Tribunal after complaints by the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa and other cultural and Christian organisations. X18 is the rating reserved for hardcore pornography, although Inxeba contains none, and meant that distribution was limited to premises licensed to show pornography, resulting in the film's removal from all South African cinemas.^[14][25][26] The Democratic Alliance criticised the decision of the Appeal Tribunal, characterising it as "nothing short of censorship" by "patriarchs and homophobes".^[27] FPB classifiers themselves have concluded that the Appeal Tribunal's rating amounted to unlawful censorship based on homophobia.^[26][28]

Urucu Media, the producers of Inxeba, and the SA Screen Federation challenged the film's X18 rating in court, on the basis that they were denied an opportunity to make representation to the Tribunal, and that the Appeal Tribunal's decision was incompatible with the principles of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.^[26][28] In March 2018 the Gauteng Division of the High Court allowed the film to be shown in cinemas with an 18 rating while the court action was pending.^[29] In June 2018 the court overturned the Appeal Tribunal's decision and restored the original rating of 16LS.^[30]