An all-too-frequently used response to the call for increased diversity on screen is based around a rather defensive notion. It’s that a piece of entertainment may be enjoyably consumed without the need for unequivocal identification with the characters being viewed. Just check out the comments section of any article arguing for a more varied set of narratives from Hollywood.

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There’s an obvious superficial truth to this statement. There are many skilfully constructed stories that don’t require the viewer’s real world experiences to directly mirror those they’ve paid money to go and see. I’ve never found myself running from raptors in the middle of a theme park that brought dinosaurs back from extinction but I enjoyed Jurassic Park. But what this argument does is entirely misunderstand why we need entertainment that encompasses a wide set of different voices.

It’s a comeback predominantly spewed by someone who regularly sees his life on screen: the straight white male. He doesn’t see the need for diversity because he’s lived a life filled with songs, shows and films directly aimed at him written by other straight white men. As a gay man, I’ve grown accustomed to this not being the case and when you grow up surrounded by media that isn’t about you and isn’t for you, it becomes the norm. It’s not as if I spend my days bitterly raging against the universe because the latest Kanye track talks about bitches rather than dudes but there’s a significant void that exists, a gap waiting to be filled by stories that I can intimately relate to – the importance of which can not be underestimated. Yet my experience pales in comparison to that of a gay man of colour whose life has been continually ignored or pushed to the sidelines, told briefly in small, barely seen films.

Moonlight has a small budget but it’s by no means a small film. It’s about the life of a black boy growing up in an impoverished Miami neighbourhood at the mercy of an addict mother. But it’s also about a gay kid struggling with his sexuality, hiding who he is for self-protection, bullied at school for being different and forced to deal with inner issues of acceptance alone. The complex and specific difficulties of the coming-out experience are so rarely represented on screen and never with the care and sensitivity displayed by writer/director Barry Jenkins.

For his second film, he found inspiration in the autobiographical play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by Tarell Alvin McCraney who took his own difficult journey and turned it into something beautiful. In three distinct yet subtly linked chapters, we see the life of Chiron: a vulnerable child growing aware of a difference he’s not quite able to define, an introverted teen withdrawing himself from life to avoid physical and mental abuse and a hyper-masculine, lonely twentysomething performing a role rather than living authentically.

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But what is living authentically when you’ve spent so much of your life running away from the truth and lying to others about who you love? It’s a question that plagues many gay men and in Moonlight, we see the added complexity that race brings to the table. Due to, yet again, a lack of adequate representation, we’re left with a very limited view of the black experience in media. The black male is too often represented as a thuggish and hypersexualized cliche devoid of vulnerability, sensitivity and texture and Jenkins fights against this stereotype with nuance and realism.

The first character we see isn’t Chiron but Juan, a local drug dealer who develops a paternal connection to the boy. He’s played with understated power by Mahershala Ali, an actor belatedly receiving the acclaim he deserves, and again our preconceptions of what such a character would be like are shattered almost immediately. He acts as the short-lived heart of the film, gifting Chiron with strength and, most importantly, acceptance – something he yearns for from his troubled mother.

While Ali has been receiving the majority of the awards acclaim (he’s a surefire best supporting actor winner at the Oscars), praise should also be equally distributed among the other important men in the film. As the young and the teenage Chirons, Alex R Hibbert and Ashton Sanders deliver heartbreaking work in different, keenly observed ways while the final chapter offers a heart-swelling two-hander between Trevante Rhodes, as the older Chiron, and André Holland as the object of his affection. It’s a dizzyingly romantic set of scenes between the pair, fraught with the aching need to be touched, loved and validated and both actors play every single beat flawlessly. An Oscar-nominated Naomie Harris and an astonishing debut performance from Janelle Monáe also deserve merit as Chiron’s opposing maternal figures.

When I initially saw Moonlight at its first screening at the Telluride film festival, I was overwhelmed. Another five viewings later, I’m still floored. Jenkins has crafted a staggering, graceful film that speaks to my experience as a gay man but, more importantly, to gay men of colour who have been made to feel lesser and invisible by a whitewashed set of LGBT stories. It’s not a film that should win best picture as a response to #OscarsSoWhite, it should win because it’s a landmark film about the power of empathy and the importance of being loved. It’s also not a film that was made to impress or even be seen by Academy voters, it was made for something bigger than that and so, with or without the award, its legacy will live on, showing black gay kids that their lives matter.