Black Butterflies is an English-language Dutch drama film about the life of South-African Afrikaans poet and anti-apartheid political dissident Ingrid Jonker. The film was directed by Paula van der Oest and premiered in the Netherlands on February 6 before being released on 31 March 2011.

Ingrid and Anna Jonker live in a seaside shack with their elderly grandmother. One night, Anna rushes into the bedroom and tells Ingrid that their grandmother is not breathing. As her body is carried away in a hearse, the politician Abraham Jonker (Rutger Hauer) arrives and expresses shock that the girls have no shoes. When Anna asks what they are to call him, Abraham replies, "Call me 'Pa.'"

Decades later, in 1960, an adult Ingrid (Carice van Houten) is swimming against the current near the Cape Town suburb of Clifton when she starts to go under. Hearing her cries, a man on shore (Liam Cunningham) dives into the water to save her. They reach the shore, and he introduces himself as novelist Jack Cope. Overjoyed, Ingrid says she has read his novel. Jack asks how she likes it. She replies that his novel saved her life. Jack is stunned to hear she is "the poet Ingrid Jonker."

Her sister Anna interrupts to say their father is waiting for her. Abraham tells Ingrid that her estranged husband, Pieter Venter, asked for a ride to her house. Ingrid says that she and Pieter have nothing in common. In the flat Ingrid and her infant daughter share with Anna, Pieter pleads for another chance. Jack calls to invite Ingrid to a party with his literary bohemian friends. Ingrid refuses Pieter and goes to the party. There, a black writer says that the Censorship Board has banned his unpublished novel and the police have confiscated the manuscript. He laments four years of his life gone to waste.

Jack and Ingrid drive the writer to the black township of Nyanga. On the way, they are stopped by a white cop, who tries to give the writer trouble. The writer tells Jack that Ingrid's father, Abraham Jonker, represents the White Supremacist National Party in Parliament and is the Chair of the Censorship Board which banned his novel. Jack says Ingrid isn't like her father. Jack and Ingrid go to his flat, where he tells her he has two children and is going through an ugly divorce. Ingrid shows him a poem she wrote in his honor, and Jack is moved. He asks why she wrote it, and she says his novel saved her life. They become lovers.

Later, Jack tells her he is madly in love with her and asks her and her daughter to move in with him. She accepts. However, Jack refuses to marry her. Although Ingrid continues to write, Jack eventually says he is unable to write and says that constantly emotionally supporting Ingrid "drains" him. He decides to visit his sons and their mother for two or three months in order to finish his novel. Although Jack promises to return, Ingrid is distraught at the idea of being apart for so long and begs him not to go. She quits her job to see him off at the train station, where she asks him to stay or take her with him. Jack leaves. Ingrid is shown having a secret abortion.

Jack calls to tell Ingrid that he will be away for another month. Soon after, she meets novelist Eugene Maritz (based on André Brink). Eugene is a fan of Ingrid's poetry, and poet and playwright Uys Krige lauds Maritz as the great hope of Afrikaans literature. Out of both anger and desperate loneliness over Jack's absence, Ingrid seduces Maritz. Jack returns to find Maritz's shoes in his closet and kicks Ingrid out.

Ingrid and Jack witness the police shoot at a car, killing a black child. The horror of this motivates Ingrid to write her most famous poem, Die Kind, which calls the child a martyr and subtly prophesies that one day Apartheid will end.