Nobel and Booker Prize winner J. M. Coetzee’s spare and searing Disgrace has been hailed as one of the defining works of post-apartheid South Africa, one that encapsulates the guilt, rage, hope, and confusion wrought by sudden socio-political upheaval and shift in the balance of power. The story centers on a disgraced professor, David, hiding on his daughter Lucy’s farm in the wake of a studentrelated sex scandal. He becomes involved in her peaceful, simple life until a violent intrusion ends the illusion of security and forces both David and Lucy to look carefully at their places in the “new South Africa.” Disgrace’s themes of redemption, atonement, exploitation-emotional, physical, and politicalare as vivid on the screen as they were on the page, and director Steve Jacobs captures the simmering tensions with grace and sensitivity.