John Trengove’s tough, beguiling debut looks at what happens when queerness throws a wrench in the rusty machinery of traditional masculinity. Set in the mountains of South Africa’s Eastern Cape, it centres on the Xhosa tribe’s circumcision ritual of Ukwaluka, in which young men come of age under the careful watch of their “caregivers”. Co-written with Thando Mgqolozana (whose 2009 novel A Man Who Is Not a Man visits the same subject), it embeds itself in a community of scythe-swinging, dick-slinging machismo.

Xolani or “X” (Nakhane Touré) is a young, closeted factory worker in Queenstown who is assigned as caregiver to a young initiate from the city: sensitive, pouty Kwanda (Niza Jay Ncoyini). “They trust you with the softies,” says a colleague. Kwanda could indeed be called a softie (or certainly, a snowflake); teased for his expensive shoes, and prone to politically charged monologues, he is marked as an anomalous initiate with western attitudes (perhaps acting here as a stand-in for white South African director Trengove).

When in motion, Trengove’s camera is tense and aggressive, mimicking the brisk, blunt brutality of the ceremony itself, though these moments are tempered by the film’s scenes of stillness. The entwined bodies of two black men, nude and underneath a waterfall; a silhouette at dusk; closeups of necks and freckles and bare chests – men’s tender parts – are sensual images in tension with the harshness of their surroundings.

The Wound is mostly interested in X and his tentative romantic relationship with fellow caregiver Vija (Bongile Mantsai). After a brief, secret (and lustily rendered) sexual encounter, it is revealed that each summer the pair have these trysts, with Vija retreating to his wife and children once the ritual is complete while X festers in Queenstown, alone and heartbroken. A blowjob is hungrily received, but a kiss refused. Still, the film resists easy moralising, with Trengove careful to flag the danger (and unpack the stakes) of “coming out” for each character, acknowledging just how taboo homosexuality is within this particular cultural context.