METAMORPHOSIS, 10min,. South Africa, Drama
Directed by Iban Bester, Roelof Hayward
A coming out story: A young gay man named Lerato is struggling to become intimate with his boyfriend Jaden, due to feelings of gay shame. One night after a romantic picnic Lerato and Jaden try to become intimate with one another, as it starts to become more serious, Lerato starts to see and hear flashes of his ex-girlfriend. She states her disgust in the activity busy being performed, thus he throws Jaden off of him and says he cannot go through with sex.

https://www.afda.co.za/film/745/Metamorphosis/
https://instagram.com/morp_osis

Director Statement
Metamorphosis is an experimental take on the typical coming out story. The film experiments with time and place, thus the past, present and future all merge into one.

The film tells the story of a young gay man named, Lerato who is struggling to move further in his relationship with his boyfriend, Jaden. He feels trapped, he cannot move forward, thus the film plays out within a non-moving car, a physical image of his entrapment.

Within Lerato’s present world (the driveway of his family home) there is a growing life sized cocoon like object growing a human male inside of it. This is an image of how Lerato feels on the inside, he feels trapped, his true self has not yet been born like a worm within a cocoon.

Lerato cannot move forward with his life due to feelings of gay shame brought on by trauma he suffers due to his homophobic past, which enters into his present, almost physically. In the end Lerato’s past merges into his present and forces him to deal with his trauma, and thus the man (aka himself) in the cocoon is born as Lerato remembers his innocent child-self untouched and uninfluenced by the thoughts and opinions of society.

In the end we come to realize why the name of the film is Metamorphosis, it is the process of transformation, our protagonist within the film goes through a process of transforming himself.