This post is part of Outward, Slate’s home for coverage of LGBTQ life, thought, and culture. Read more here.

Since its premiere last summer, the South African film Inxeba (The Wound) has garnered praise for tackling issues rarely depicted on screen, including gay male relationships and the male initiation process of the AmaXhosa, the second largest ethnic group in South Africa.

Feted in the larger cinema world, the film has received numerous awards, including being shortlisted for the Oscars’ Best Foreign Language Film last year. But in South Africa, controversy around the movie has been so severe that in February, the Appeal Tribunal of South Africa’s Film and Publication Board reclassified Inxeba as hardcore pornography, banning the film from South African theaters. On June 28, a court in Pretoria overturned Inxeba’s designation as pornography, affirming that the film can be screened in South African theaters. But the judge also cautioned that Inxeba was damaging from a cultural perspective, saying, “It contains harmful scenes which could cause tensions within the Xhosa community.”

Unfortunately, this charge, like so much of the criticism against the film, pits Xhosa identity against homosexuality.

Inxeba follows Xolani, a closeted factory worker, as he helps initiate a group of teenage boys into manhood on a mountain in rural South Africa. Each year during the initiation, Xolani rekindles a secret romance with another male caregiver, Vija. Xolani is assigned to mentor Kwanda, an openly gay initiate. When Kwanda discovers—and threatens to reveal—Xolani and Vija’s clandestine relationship, the tension between the three reaches a boiling point.

Inxeba is a nuanced meditation on the relationship between masculinity, homosexuality, and tradition in South Africa, but its unflinching portrayal of the initiation process—known as ulwaluko in isiXhosa—and gay men’s experiences on the mountain has proven so controversial that members of the cast and crew have received death threats. Ulwaluko is a circumcision rite meant to prepare young Xhosa men for the expectations and responsibilities of manhood. Given the cultural significance of ulwaluko, details of the initiation process are kept secret from everyone except those who go through it.

Of course, Inxeba is not solely about ulwaluko. Throughout the film, Xolani wrestles with his own masculinity and his status as an outsider. The film also addresses the urban-rural divide, class differences, and the lingering effects of apartheid. At its core, Inxeba is a measured look at Xolani’s attempt to reconcile the various parts of his identity and the consequences that arise as his carefully curated life begins to unravel.

But criticism of Inxeba tends to focus on the film’s depiction of the initiation process and gay Xhosa men’s presence on the mountain. Critics argue that the details of initiation shouldn’t be revealed for all the world to see. (This, even though Inxeba is not the first public depiction of ulwaluko: Nelson Mandela wrote about his own initiation in his 1994 autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.) Some further claim that the film’s subject matter commodifies Xhosa culture for white audiences. This is bolstered by the fact that the film’s director, John Trengove, is a white South African. One opinion piece argued that Trengove, as someone who is not Xhosa, “had no right” to make this film at all.

Another line of criticism argues—sometimes implicitly—that the film’s gay themes are inherently offensive or degrading to the Xhosa community. In its worst iterations, this critique portrays homosexuality as incompatible with being African—a deeply ahistorical claim, given the extensive documentation of diverse expressions of same-sex desire and homosexual identity in African communities throughout history.

While it’s easy to dismiss the obviously homophobic claims, there is some merit to the objections around cultural invasion and commodification. Indeed, I was initially wary of seeing the film, given its sensitive subject matter. However, I was convinced to go after hearing its cast members’ poignant perspectives, and now I think that the film is important because it affirms that queerness and Xhosa identity are not at odds with one another.

Nakhane, an openly gay singer-songwriter who made his film debut as Xolani, has been outspoken about Inxeba’s value, saying, “Inxeba is an important film to many people. And I don’t regret a single moment of being a part of it.” In an interview with South Africa’s City Press, Nakhane responded beautifully to criticisms of the film. “I understand people’s grievances, and I understand why people are angry because this is their culture, right? And people feel their culture is being ‘sold,’ ” Nakhane said. “I sort of want to pick that sentence apart. [Because] it’s always ‘our’ culture. And there’s also always a sort of exclusion of people like me in this culture. It’s my culture too. Do I not have a say?”

Niza Jay Ncoyini, who plays Kwanda, is also openly gay. After Inxeba won six awards at the South African Film and Television Awards in March, Ncoyini called it “a victory for the little black gay boy … who isn’t getting the love and respect that he deserves.” Many more of the film’s cast and crew were initiated themselves. One of the film’s writers, Thando Mgqolozana, also wrote A Man Who Is Not a Man, a book that addresses the consequences of a botched circumcision.

Those involved in the film’s creation are insisting upon its significance. “I knew it was important that we queer that space,” Nakhane explained to GQ. “It’s a space that denies that queerness exists at all, even though everyone that goes [to the mountain] knows that it does.

The erasure of queer bodies in Xhosa initiation rites is incredibly dangerous.”

Ultimately, it is inaccurate to position this as a fight between the guardians of Xhosa culture versus gay viewers—that’s a false dichotomy. Some of the strongest supporters of the film are queer Xhosa people who have praised the film for speaking out about gay men’s fraught initiation experiences, which is rarely discussed in public.

With the court’s ruling that Inxeba isn’t pornographic, there is bound to be renewed criticism. However, as Ncoyini said in a statement during the film’s legal battle, “I hope that the conversation spurred by the film will go beyond being a hot topic and that it will be had in our homes, families, and communities. This film is bigger than all of us who made it.”

Inxeba is currently streaming on Netflix.