A feature exploring the racy theme of inter-racial sex tourism is the Bermuda International Film Festival’s November Film Night selection.

Heading South (Vers le Sud), starring Charlotte Rampling, will screen tomorrow at 7.30 p.m. at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute. Tickets can be reserved by e-mailing the festival at info<$>[AT]biff.bm.<$>

The film, which screened at the Toronto, Venice, Rio and San Sebastian festivals, also received a theatrical release in the United States this summer and currently sits among the foreign film box office leaders in the US. It won awards at Venice for director Laurent Cantet and the male lead, Menothy Cesar.

Set in 1970s Haiti, the compact drama boils over with political and sexual subtext. Rampling is Ellen, a middle-aged professor at Wellesley who spends her summers in Haiti.

Disenchanted with her stagnant career teaching French literature, she finds a new and more rewarding passion — the exquisite bodies of young black men, which can be bought for sums that are trifling to the affluent.

Her world is about to be rocked, though, by the arrival of Brenda (Karen Young), a younger woman who is obsessed by the memory of the young Haitian with whom she had sex a few years before and who now turns out to be a special, pampered favourite of Ellen’s.

He is Legba (Cesar), who has his own complicated secrets and a reason to fear the repressive regime of Haitian dictator, “Baby Doc” Duvalier.

As touching as it is disturbing, Heading South is an unconventional exploration of desire and longing - and what we now refer to as “sex tourism” <\m> with superb performances and direction. The film screens in French with English subtitles.