Long listed for the 2018 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Inxeba (The Wound) is a powerful new South African film that tells a tale of forbidden love between two counsellors at a Xhosa initiation camp.

After being branded with an X-rating by the South African Film and Publication Board in early February 2018 (a reclassification which effectively saw the film being banned from South African cinemas), Inxeba's producers appealed and as of March 6 the film's X-rating has been overturned and Inxeba is returning to South African cinemas with an 18 age restriction.

Inxeba is the story of a closeted gay factory worker who joins the men of his community in the mountains of the Eastern Cape to assist in the traditional initiation of a group of teenage boys. Once there however, he meets an old lover and they resume their affair. When a defiant initiate from the city discovers their secret, he threatens to reveal their complex web of sexual hypocrisy and lies to the deeply conservative community from which they come.

Lead actor Nakhane Touré won Best Actor in a Foreign Film at the Palm Springs Film Festival for his role in the film and among other high profile festival appearances (including a premiere at the 2017 Sundance Festival) Inxeba opened the 2017 Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival.