There’s something about isolation that reveals everything.
In Adam, a blistering South African drama directed by Winford Collings and Liyema Speelman, we meet an 18-year-old boy whose defiance meets its harshest test yet. This isn’t your typical troubled-teen story. It’s deeper, darker—and far more intimate.
Adam, played with raw nerve by Marko Vorster, is sent away to the Prinsloo Bush School by his anxious mother, Carol (Inge Beckmann), and her insidious boyfriend, Rian. On paper, it’s a school. In reality? A brutal bootcamp. Discipline through pain. Strength through silence. Obedience through fear.
The movie doesn’t waste time painting paradise. From the opening frame, we feel the suffocation. The dust, the sweat, the rigid routine. It’s military ethos dressed up as character-building. But the characters here aren’t meant to be built. They’re broken into submission.
Adam, however, refuses to break. That refusal becomes the film’s heartbeat.
He questions. He resists. He aches. And in that resistance, the film finds its voice.
Collings’ direction is sharp and deliberate. Every scene is soaked in tension. The long silences between Adam and his teacher (played by Dirk Stoltz) say more than pages of dialogue ever could. There’s a looming power dynamic—quiet, but volatile. You sense something will eventually crack.
And it does.
The acting? Simply put, phenomenal.
Marko Vorster doesn’t perform. He inhabits. His Adam is fragile but fiery. There’s a storm behind his eyes, and it never really settles. He moves like someone both searching and hiding—trapped not just in a school, but in a war with himself. It’s a performance full of instinct and precision.
Dirk Stoltz, as the idealistic teacher, holds his own. His presence is haunting. He walks a moral tightrope—too soft for the system, too hard for rebellion. Their scenes together are magnetic.
And then there’s Inge Beckmann as the mother. She’s barely on screen, but her decisions echo throughout the film. Her eyes carry guilt, fear, and fatigue. She’s not a villain. She’s just tired. And that’s what makes her dangerous.
Visually, Adam is stripped back and sharp. The camera lingers—on sweat, on scars, on stillness. The bush school is its own character—unforgiving, remote, and hollow. The natural light plays games with tone. Daylight offers no safety. Night brings no rest.
The sound design is unsettling in the best way. No dramatic strings. No cues for how to feel. Just breathing. Footsteps. Silence. The quiet here isn’t peace—it’s pressure.
But Adam isn’t just aesthetics and atmosphere. It’s about power. And fear. And masculinity. It’s about what happens when boys are taught to suppress rather than express. About how trauma doesn’t build men—it buries them.
The film’s biggest triumph? It doesn’t moralize. It doesn’t explain away brutality or hand us easy redemption. It just shows. It dares the viewer to feel uncomfortable—and to sit with it.
And that discomfort lingers.
This isn’t a film that offers escape. It confronts. It pierces. It leaves splinters. But it also, gently, reminds us that there’s still choice. Still agency. Even when the world tries to crush it out of you.
Adam doesn’t whisper. It growls. And sometimes, that’s exactly what needs to be heard.
