Moonlight, a brilliantly realised vision, manages to span a lifetime while being intimate and engaging. It’s a story which is both sad and uplifting; tragic while at the same time inspiring, with a central theme being that of ‘identity’. It’s a purposeful, intelligent and compassionate story about assumptions, youth, adolescence, and adulthood, and what it means to grow up poor, black and gay in America right now.

It is a stunningly beautiful film.

As a piece of cinema, crikey. The way it’s written, directed, shot, scored, acted, edited. Every last note is close to perfect.

It’s also somewhat ironic, that a film could be made so well as to draw you ever so much closer to a character whose entire raison d’être is to keep people at arm’s length. This is a film-as-meditation on growing up, split into three roughly equal parts (youth, ‘Little’; adolescence ‘Chiron’, and adulthood ‘Black’), which is relatable, or at least should be to anyone who has ever wanted to not be noticed, stand out in the crowd, lest we get hurt. You don’t have to be black, poor or gay to appreciate its message – you just need to have been on the underside of good fortune at one time or another.

You have to credit writer-director Barry Jenkins for steering his plot, settings and characters away from stereotypes. The outstanding Mahershala Ali plays a do-rag-sporting crack dealer, whose profession belies his soul and compassion. The neighbourhood in which these characters live is not a grimy ghetto, but a beautifully lit Florida beach community. There are no soliloquies about being yourself; characters are simply given the time and space to open up of their own volition. It’s also not an easy film to watch – not for its subject matter – because of the raw emotions that are conveyed through near-silent performances by the three leads who play Chiron at the three stages of his life (Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, Trevante Rhodes). Not a lot of dialogue stems from them; it’s all in the eyes.

It’s encouraging that such a small film, touching on what are (for the lack of a better term) ‘niche’ themes can get released in cinemas, and be the recipient of such acclaim as this one has (eight Oscar nominations; Golden Globe for Best Picture – Drama). Without the gold derby, we’d not likely have seen this one. And Moonlight is a great one; one for the ages.