Birthdate: May 26, 1983
Birthplace: Cape Town, South Africa
Oliver Hermanus is one of South Africa’s most important and internationally successful writer-directors. As indicated by Living (2022), his extraordinary and moving version of Kazuo Ishiguro’s English-language screenplay adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), Hermanus has been increasingly making films for a global audience with stories beyond South African borders.
His feature debut, Shirley Adams (2009), starring Denise Newman and Keenan Arrison, premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and won best film and director at the South African Film and Television Awards. Hermanus’ sophomore, gay-themed feature, Beauty (2011), gained a world premiere slot in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, a second South African Film and TV Best Director award for Hermanus, and a Best Actor for star Deon Lotz.
Hermanus continued his remarkable festival run with his South African drama, The Endless River (2015), with Nicolas Duvauchelle and Crystal-Donna Roberts, competing for the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion award and premiering in North America at the Toronto Film Festival. The writer-director returned to Venice for the world premiere of his fourth feature, Moffie (2019), based on Andre Carl van der Merwe’s autobiographical novel about South Africa’s war in Angola and starring Kai Luke Brummer and Ryan de Villiers.
In 2022, Oliver Hermanus’ profile grew prominently with the arrival of the brilliant Living, starring Bill Nighy in a career-best performance as a London bureaucrat. The movie, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and later at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, marked Hermanus’ second-in-a-row adaptation, his first with the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Ishiguro as a screenwriter, and his first distributed by Sony Pictures Classics in the U.S.
Oliver Hermanus was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and raised in the community of Plettenberg Bay in a so-called “Coloured” (or multi-racial) family during South Africa’s Apartheid regime. Hermanus’ parents worked with the African National Congress, led by Nelson Mandela, and the leading political opposition organization to South Africa’s white, Apartheid rule.
Hermanus was home-schooled and also attended a school in the Eastern Cape Province. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Film, Media, and Visual Studies at the University of Cape Town. Hermanus later gained a scholarship to the London Film School, achieving a Master’s Degree in Film. A resident in South Africa’s Western Cape Province, Hermanus is gay.
Winner, Queer Palm, Cannes Film Festival (2011).
BAFTA Film Award
BAFTA Awards
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Previous (3)
Personal Cinema: Oliver Hermanus wrote the story for his feature debut, Shirley Adams, from an incident related to him by his sister, who is an occupational therapist.
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