Both of the presumed frontrunners feel like challengers: The Shape of Water, with its offbeat fantasy, sudden
violence, and, um, interspecies sex; and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which delights in confounding viewer expectations and has
endured controversies about an ill - conceived
racial subplot.
Mounted in the U.S. during a flurry of highly visible
racial tension and the #BlackLivesMatter campaign, the photographs and statistics addressing the brutal «corrective» rapes or murders of LGBTI individuals in South Africa only increase our awareness of the
enduring violence against the black body.