South African filmmaker Oliver Hermanus was BOTD in 1983. Born in Cape Town during South Africa’s apartheid regime, his family moved to Plettenberg Bay when he was three. His family’s “coloured status” required them to move out of the town centre, eventually building and living in a house in the hills. Hermanus’ parents were actively involved in the anti-apartheid African National Congress, removing their children from state schools because lessons were taught in Afrikaans, trading banned books and ignoring rules about racial segregation of beaches. Largely home-schooled, he studied filmmaking at the University of Cape Town, then worked as a press photographer for the Cape Argus newspaper. He was mentored by German filmmaker Roland Emmerich, who paid for him to attend the London Film School and helped produce his 2009 debut feature film Shirley Adams. A critical and commercial success, it won best film and best director at the South African Film & Television Awards. He achieved wider public attention with his 2011 film Skoonheid (Beauty), a harrowing drama about a closeted married man who becomes obsessed with his daughter’s handsome young fiancé. Screened at the Cannes Festival, it won the Queer Palm for best LGBTQ feature, and earned Hermanus a second best director prize at the South African film awards. His 2015 film The Endless River became the first South African film selected for the main competition at the Venice Film Festival. He returned to Venice in 2019 with Moffie, a stunning drama about closeted gay soldiers serving in the South African military during the apartheid-era. In 2022, he directed Living, an English-language remake of Akira Kurosawa’s film Ikiru, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Critically acclaimed, it earned Oscar nominations for lead actor Bill Nighy and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro. Hermanus’ next project, The History of Sound, stars Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor as folk music historians who fall in love in 1910s New England. Openly gay since forever, Hermanus lives in Barrydale in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. His next project will be a biopic of fashion designer Alexander McQueen, scripted by Hermanus’ protégé Harry Lighton.