The Aquatics

Cameroonian filmmaker and photographer Lewat makes her English-language debut with a shocking morality tale about an African woman torn between her bureaucrat husband and her artist friend, whose homosexuality is a high crime in their fictional country of Zambuena. Katmé Abbia and her husband, Tashun, are patrons of her old friend Samuel “Samy” Pankeu. After Samy finds success with a pointedly political art exhibit, a newspaper outs him as gay, which is punishable by a life sentence. Samy is arrested, jailed, sodomized by his fellow inmates, and tortured by the police. Hoodlums sack the gallery where his art is displayed and deface his work. Katmé is soon forced to choose between supporting her friend and standing by her husband, who is distancing himself from the scandal amid a looming election campaign. Lewat pulls no punches in her depiction of virulent hatred toward queer people, and she illustrates Katmé’s inner turmoil with vivid flashbacks, such as the death of Katmé’s mother from internal injuries sustained in a car accident. This one hits hard. (Dec.)