Just in time for Halloween season, Knife + Heart, director Yann Gonzalez’s deliriously stylish, blood-soaked queer thriller, is now streaming on Dekkoo.
Set in Paris in the summer of 1979, the film stars Vanessa Paradis as Anne, a producer of low-budget gay adult films whose personal and professional worlds are beginning to unravel. Her editor and lover, Loïs (Kate Moran), has left her, and Anne throws herself into making her most ambitious film yet in an attempt to win her back.
Then one of her actors is brutally murdered.
As more members of Anne’s filmmaking family become targets of a mysterious masked killer, she is pulled into an increasingly strange investigation that transforms Knife + Heart from erotic melodrama into a feverish murder mystery.
Director Yann Gonzalez takes the heightened colors, elaborate murders, mystery and eroticism of classic Italian giallo cinema and filters them through an unmistakably queer lens. The result is one of the more distinctive gay movies you’ll find on Dekkoo.
Shot on 35mm and powered by a hypnotic retro score from M83, Knife + Heart is at once a slasher film, a love story and an affectionate tribute to a vanished corner of queer culture.
The film earned international acclaim after premiering in competition for the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Its cast includes Vanessa Paradis, Nicolas Maury, Kate Moran, Jonathan Genet, Romane Bohringer and Félix Maritaud.
But beneath all the neon, sex and blood is something surprisingly tender.
Gonzalez gives the men in Anne’s films lives, friendships and a genuine sense of community. As the killer begins tearing that community apart, Knife + Heart becomes as melancholy as it is macabre. That combination of desire, heartbreak and danger makes it a particularly provocative entry among Dekkoo’s collection of sexy gay movies.
Out For Blood on Dekkoo
Knife + Heart arrives on Dekkoo as the newest addition to this month’s Dekkoo Selects: Out For Blood, our October collection celebrating the darker side of queer cinema.
From killers and creatures to psychological terror and things that go bump in the night, Out For Blood brings together gay and queer films perfect for Halloween viewing — and few movies embody that collision of sexuality, camp and horror quite as spectacularly as Knife + Heart.
The film’s erotic undercurrent also makes it a natural fit for viewers exploring Dekkoo’s steamy gay movies, although Knife + Heart adds considerably more blood to the equation.
Sexy, strange, romantic and unapologetically bloody, Knife + Heart is a horror film with a pulse all its own — and another reason to explore the growing collection of gay movies streaming on Dekkoo.
Long before a movie lands in your watchlist, it may have already traveled the world.
Film festivals have always been an essential part of LGBTQ+ cinema. They give independent filmmakers a place to take risks, introduce audiences to stories they might never encounter at the multiplex and help small films find an audience far beyond where they were made.
And while we’re always excited about what’s new on Dekkoo, there’s a lot of acclaimed gay and queer cinema waiting to be rediscovered deeper in our library.
From Sundance to Berlin, Toronto to Torino, here are five festival favorites worth another look.
The Mouth of the Wolf
Pietro Marcello’s The Mouth of the Wolf (La bocca del lupo) isn’t easily categorized. Part documentary, part love story and part portrait of the Italian port city of Genoa, the film follows Vincenzo, a former prisoner, and Mary, the trans woman who waited years for his return.
That unconventional approach made an impression from the beginning.
The film won the top prize and the FIPRESCI critics’ prize at the 2009 Torino Film Festival before traveling to the Berlin International Film Festival, where it received both the Caligari Film Award and the Teddy Award for Best Documentary.
Its success continued well beyond Berlin, eventually earning Italy’s prestigious David di Donatello for Best Documentary.
More than fifteen years later, the film remains a hauntingly beautiful portrait of two people whose love exists on the margins. It’s exactly the kind of film worth digging deeper into the Dekkoo library to discover.
Before director Cam Archer’s Wild Tigers I Have Known became a cult queer coming-of-age film, it made its debut at one of the biggest showcases for independent cinema in the world: the Sundance Film Festival.
The dreamlike 2006 film follows Logan, a teenage boy navigating his emerging sexuality and an intense crush on an older classmate. Unable to express what he’s feeling directly, Logan creates a female alter ego and begins calling the object of his affection.
It’s strange, intimate, visually adventurous and deliberately unlike a conventional coming-out movie.
After Sundance, Wild Tigers I Have Known continued through the festival circuit, appearing at festivals including Outfest, Seattle, Provincetown and Locarno and introducing audiences to Archer’s distinctive filmmaking voice.
Two decades later, the film has become a fascinating snapshot of 2000s queer independent cinema. Dekkoo is currently streaming a newly restored version.
Chilean musician and filmmaker Álex Anwandter made his feature directorial debut with a story inspired by a real-life hate crime.
You’ll Never Be Alone (Nunca Vas a Estar Solo) centers on Juan, a withdrawn factory manager whose gender-fluid teenage son, Pablo, is brutally attacked. Faced with a system that offers little help, Juan is forced to confront both the violence inflicted on his son and truths within himself.
The film traveled to the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival, where it screened in the Panorama section and received the Teddy Special Jury Award.
The Teddy Awards, presented during the Berlinale, have been recognizing outstanding LGBTQ+ cinema since 1987, making the honor particularly significant for a first-time feature filmmaker.
You’ll Never Be Alone can be difficult viewing, but it’s also a powerful father-and-son story. It’s one of the more striking international dramas hiding in the Dekkoo catalog.
In 1993, Canadian filmmaker John Greyson decided to make a movie about AIDS.
He made it a musical.
Zero Patience takes aim at the notorious myth of “Patient Zero,” combining romance, satire, fantasy, activism and musical numbers into one of the more audacious artifacts of the New Queer Cinema era.
The film’s refusal to treat AIDS as material that could only be approached solemnly was radical. Instead, Greyson used camp, anger and absurdity to challenge the stories being told about gay men and the epidemic.
Festival audiences took notice. Zero Patience won both Best Canadian Film and Best Ontario Feature at Cinéfest Sudbury and received a Special Jury Citation for Best Canadian Feature at Toronto’s Festival of Festivals (now known as the Toronto International Film Festival).
More than 30 years later, the film remains provocative, funny, angry and gloriously strange.
Dekkoo is streaming a restored version of this queer cinema landmark.
Great festival discoveries don’t have to be feature-length.
Martin Edralin’s Canadian short Hole runs less than 15 minutes, but it tackles a subject rarely explored with such frankness: the sexual and emotional needs of a gay man living with a disability.
Billy wants intimacy. His physical disability makes finding it considerably more complicated.
Rather than sentimentalizing him, Hole allows Billy to be lonely, frustrated and sexual — treating desire as an essential part of his humanity.
The short reached a major international audience when it screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015 and continued to earn recognition on the festival circuit.
It’s also a good reminder of why short films are worth exploring on Dekkoo. Some stories don’t need two hours to leave an impression.
Festival premieres and awards can help a movie get noticed, but they’re only the beginning of its life.
One of the pleasures of having a deep film library is that discovery doesn’t have an expiration date. A movie that audiences first encountered at Sundance twenty years ago can be completely new to someone pressing play tonight.
So the next time you’re scrolling through Dekkoo, venture beyond the newest releases.
You might find a festival favorite you missed the first time around.
One of the year’s most acclaimed gay films has arrived on Dekkoo.
Maspalomas, the award-winning Spanish drama about sexuality, aging and the freedom to live openly, is now streaming exclusively on Dekkoo.
Sunny, sexy, moving and deeply human, Maspalomas explores a chapter of gay life rarely given this kind of attention on screen: what happens when the freedom you fought decades to achieve suddenly feels like it could be taken away?
And if you’ve been searching for where to watchMaspalomasonline, you’ve found it. Dekkoo is the exclusive streaming home ofMaspalomas.
Vicente embraces the freedom of life in Maspalomas before an unexpected turn forces him to reconsider what it means to live openly.
A Gay Life Lived on His Own Terms
Vicente is 76 years old and has spent years building the life he wanted.
After coming out later in life, he left behind his wife and daughter and eventually settled in Maspalomas, the sun-drenched resort town on Gran Canaria famous for its vibrant gay community. There, Vicente has been able to embrace his sexuality and enjoy the kind of openness that wasn’t available to him for much of his life.
Then everything changes.
After suffering a stroke, Vicente wakes to discover that he has been returned to San Sebastián, where his estranged daughter has placed him in a long-term care home.
Suddenly, the openly gay life he created feels very far away.
Vicente doesn’t tell the people around him that he’s gay. At first, it doesn’t seem necessary. But little by little, he realizes something unsettling: after fighting his way out of the closet once before, he has somehow found himself back inside it.
We’ve seen countless films about young people struggling to come out. Maspalomas asks what happens decades later.
For Vicente, coming out wasn’t the end of the story. Living openly is something that still requires independence, community and the ability to define his own life.
That’s what makes Maspalomas such a fascinating addition to Dekkoo’s collection of gay coming-out stories. It turns the familiar narrative on its head. Vicente already knows who he is. He’s already come out. He’s already lived openly.
The question is whether he can hold onto that freedom when age, health and circumstance make him vulnerable again.
It’s an especially resonant subject because LGBTQ+ stories about aging remain relatively uncommon on screen. Gay cinema has understandably spent decades exploring youth, first love and coming out, but our lives don’t stop there.
Neither does our desire for intimacy, sex, companionship or independence.
Maspalomas refuses to treat those things as exclusively belonging to the young.
Sexy, Candid and Unapologetically Gay
Maspalomas also isn’t interested in presenting Vicente as a sanitized version of an older gay man.
He’s sexual. He’s complicated. He has regrets. He wants connection. He has made choices that hurt people. And he’s still figuring things out.
The film’s frankness about sexuality is part of what makes its portrait of aging feel so refreshing. Rather than turning Vicente into a symbol, Maspalomas allows him to remain a fully realized gay man.
That combination of sexuality, vulnerability and emotional honesty gives the movie a warmth that keeps it from becoming simply a story about aging or illness.
It’s a story about living.
For viewers looking for thoughtful, provocative gay drama movies, Maspalomas is an especially rewarding discovery.
An Award-Winning Performance from José Ramón Soroiz
At the center of the film is an extraordinary performance from José Ramón Soroiz as Vicente.
Rather than reducing Vicente to an easy hero or victim, Soroiz gives us a man who can be stubborn, frightened, funny, selfish, affectionate and vulnerable — sometimes all within the same scene.
It’s precisely those contradictions that make Vicente feel so alive.
The film and Soroiz’s performance earned major recognition on the international festival and awards circuit, helping establish Maspalomas as one of the standout LGBTQ+ films to emerge from Spain in recent years.
Now, audiences can discover the film at home exclusively on Dekkoo.
Queer cinema has always been about more than representation. At its best, it lets us see experiences that mainstream film has often ignored.
Maspalomas does exactly that.
It’s a movie about what happens after coming out.
After liberation.
After relationships.
After decades of building a life.
And it asks an uncomfortable but important question: Is the freedom to live openly something LGBTQ+ people can ever completely take for granted?
For Vicente, getting older doesn’t mean becoming less gay, less sexual or less interested in connection. It simply means navigating those desires in a world that may not always know what to do with them.
That makes Maspalomas not only one of the more unusual gay films in recent years, but one of the more compassionate.
Maspalomas Is Only on Dekkoo
For fans of international gay cinema, Maspalomas is another reason to explore films you won’t find on mainstream streaming services.
Dekkoo is the exclusive streaming home ofMaspalomas.
The film joins Dekkoo’s Only on Dekkoo collection of exclusive gay films and series from around the world.
And that’s an important part of what Dekkoo is all about.
While larger streaming platforms offer LGBTQ+ titles as one small part of enormous general-interest catalogs, Dekkoo is dedicated to gay cinema from around the world, bringing together acclaimed international films, independent discoveries, Dekkoo Originals and exclusive releases created specifically for gay audiences.
Maspalomas is exactly the kind of film we want audiences to be able to discover here: bold, distinctly queer and willing to tell a story that might otherwise struggle to find a home on mainstream streaming platforms.
Where Can I Watch Maspalomas Online?
If you’re searching for where to streamMaspalomas or where to watchMaspalomasonline, the answer is simple:
You can streamMaspalomasexclusively on Dekkoo.
Subscribers can watch the complete film on demand and ad-free.
New to Dekkoo? Explore our growing collection of gay movies, international LGBTQ+ cinema, original series, shorts and exclusive films from around the world.
Discover More Gay Cinema on Dekkoo
After watching Maspalomas, there’s plenty more to discover.
Explore Only on Dekkoo for exclusive gay movies and series you won’t find anywhere else, or see the latest additions in Just Added.
Looking for another serious, character-driven film? Browse Dekkoo’s collection of gay dramas.
Maspalomas is streaming exclusively on Dekkoo. Watch it today and discover why this sexy, moving and unusually candid portrait of gay life and aging has connected so strongly with audiences.
There are places where gay men have always found one another.
Bars. Parks. Beaches. Rest stops. Back rooms. And sometimes, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.
Now streaming on Dekkoo, the experimental gay short film Desert Cruising transforms queer filmmaker Charles Lum’s personal cruising diaries into a provocative meditation on sex, memory and the unexpected places where gay men find connection.
Directed by Charles Lum and Todd Verow, Desert Cruising unfolds through the recollections of an anonymous narrator describing a series of steamy encounters in the desert. Against the stark landscape, memories of men, bodies and fleeting connections begin to accumulate.
At just over four minutes, the film is brief, but that brevity is part of its power. These aren’t grand romances or carefully constructed love stories. They are moments: a stranger, an encounter, a particular place and the memory that remains after everything else has disappeared.
For viewers interested in discovering more unconventional queer cinema, Desert Cruising joins Dekkoo’s growing collection of gay short films from filmmakers around the world.
Cruising as Queer Memory
Cruising has a complicated but undeniable place in gay history.
Long before dating apps made it possible to find another gay man with a swipe, generations of men developed their own geography of desire. Parks, beaches, public bathrooms, roadside areas and other seemingly ordinary spaces could become places of recognition, sexual freedom and possibility.
Desert Cruising captures something particularly fascinating about that history: how vividly those encounters can survive in memory.
The film is drawn from Charles Lum’s own cruising diaries, transforming his recollections into something that exists somewhere between confession, oral history and erotic memoir.
The men themselves may have been anonymous.
The encounters weren’t.
The Landscape of Desire
There is something wonderfully contradictory about setting these memories against the vastness of the desert.
The landscape suggests isolation. Cruising depends upon discovery.
A place that appears empty can suddenly become charged with possibility when another man appears. A glance can become an invitation. A seemingly anonymous stretch of landscape can become intensely personal.
That tension gives Desert Cruising its distinctive atmosphere. Desire exists almost like a secret layer beneath the landscape — invisible unless you know how to recognize it.
It’s the kind of personal and unapologetically queer storytelling that makes short-form filmmaking so exciting. Without the conventions of a feature-length narrative, filmmakers can capture experiences, memories and fragments of gay life that might otherwise go undocumented.
Desert Cruising comes from filmmakers Charles Lum and Todd Verow, longtime collaborators whose work has repeatedly explored gay sexuality, cruising, aging and queer memory.
Their collaborations include The End of Cruising, Age of Consent, My Almost First Time, Charles Lum: This Is Where I Get Off and the experimental feature Memorabilia.
Like Desert Cruising, Memorabilia draws upon Lum’s stories and cruising diaries, using personal recollection and archival material to explore the way sexual experiences become part of the record of a life.
That history gives Desert Cruising another dimension.
What initially feels like an unabashed recollection of sexual adventure gradually becomes something else: a record of experience.
Places change. Bodies age. Strangers disappear. Even the ways gay men meet one another change.
But the memories remain.
From the Festival Circuit to Dekkoo
Before arriving on Dekkoo, Desert Cruising appeared on the queer and experimental film festival circuit.
The film screened as part of “Slippage: Queer Experiments in Time and Place” at Boston’s Wicked Queer Film Festival, a program showcasing unconventional approaches to queer experience, memory and place.
The film was also selected for MixBrasil, one of Latin America’s major LGBTQ+ cultural festivals, where it appeared in the aptly named shorts program “Hookup in Six Acts.”
Now, the film is available to stream as part of Dekkoo’s continually expanding collection of independent and international gay cinema.
Watch Desert Cruising on Dekkoo
Sexy, intimate and unexpectedly nostalgic, Desert Cruising celebrates the fleeting encounters that become permanent memories — and the queer instinct for finding connection in even the most unlikely places.
Sometimes a few minutes with a stranger can stay with you for decades.
There’s something about an isolated cabin that should immediately make any horror fan suspicious.
In The Latent Image, a secluded writing retreat, a mysterious stranger and an increasingly dangerous attraction come together in a sexy psychological thriller where fantasy and reality become almost impossible to separate.
The gay horror film is now streaming on Dekkoo, joining our growing collection of gay movies, queer thrillers and LGBTQ+ cinema from around the world.
Writer-director Alexander McGregor Birrell introduces us to Ben (Joshua Tonks), a thriller writer struggling for inspiration who retreats to an isolated rural cabin to work on his latest novel and escape the growing tension between himself and his boyfriend, Jamie (William Tippery).
Then, late one night, Ben discovers that he isn’t alone.
A wounded stranger (Jay Clift) has appeared at the cabin, claiming to be a hunter whose car has broken down nearby. He’s handsome, mysterious and potentially dangerous—and Ben can’t help being intrigued.
Rather than simply fearing the unexpected visitor, Ben begins using him as inspiration for his writing. Soon the two men are acting out increasingly elaborate—and increasingly dangerous—scenarios inspired by Ben’s story.
Attraction mixes with suspicion. Fantasy starts bleeding into reality. And the stranger who seemed like the perfect inspiration may be hiding something far more disturbing.
What follows is a sexually charged game of cat and mouse that makes The Latent Image an especially intriguing entry in the world of gay horror movies.
Queer Horror With a Seductive Edge
Part psychological thriller, part erotic nightmare, The Latent Image plays with one of horror’s oldest questions: what happens when the thing you desire may also be the thing you should fear?
Joshua Tonks and Jay Clift give the film its dangerous chemistry. Their characters circle one another with a mixture of curiosity, lust and distrust, while the film continually asks the audience to reconsider what they’re seeing.
Is Ben imagining events?
Is his fiction coming to life?
Or has he invited a very real threat into the cabin?
The uncertainty is part of the fun.
For viewers who like their queer horror atmospheric, psychological and more than a little sexy, this is one cabin in the woods worth visiting.
A Gay Thriller Where Fantasy Becomes Reality
The film also belongs to a long tradition of stories about writers who become trapped inside the worlds they create. In The Latent Image, however, that idea takes on an unmistakably queer dimension.
Ben’s attraction to the stranger becomes intertwined with the violent story he’s constructing, turning desire itself into another source of suspense.
It’s exactly the kind of film that demonstrates how much territory LGBTQ+ movies can cover. Queer cinema doesn’t have to fit neatly into romance, coming-of-age stories or drama. It can be strange, frightening, erotic, bloody and unpredictable too.
And if The Latent Image leaves you craving more suspense, explore Dekkoo’s collection of gay mystery and thriller movies for even more dangerous encounters, dark secrets and unexpected twists.
The feature expands that deliciously simple premise into an 83-minute psychological thriller, giving its characters—and their increasingly dangerous relationship—more room to develop.
Watch The Latent Image on Dekkoo
If your idea of the perfect movie night involves an isolated cabin, a handsome stranger, sexual tension and the creeping suspicion that something has gone terribly wrong, The Latent Image should be on your watchlist.
Halloween is the perfect excuse to turn down the lights, lock the doors and spend the night with something a little darker.
This October, Dekkoo Selects: Out For Blood ventures into the darker side of queer cinema with nine horror movies, thrillers, slashers and supernatural stories filled with deadly secrets, twisted desires and things that definitely go bump in the night.
Whether you like your queer horror genuinely frightening, darkly funny, sexually charged or just completely bonkers, there’s something here worth adding to your Halloween watchlist.
Here are nine gay horror movies and queer thrillers streaming now on Dekkoo.
Scorch Marks
A remote getaway becomes anything but peaceful in Scorch Marks, a chilling psychological thriller about trauma, obsession and a past that refuses to stay buried.
Beckett retreats to an isolated rental hoping to escape the ghosts of his past. Instead, his already fragile grip on reality is tested by the unexpected arrival of Joel, his abusive ex-husband. Forced together, the two men must confront the toxic history that still binds them — while something increasingly sinister closes in.
Dark, unsettling and deeply rooted in the complicated history between its two central characters, Scorch Marks is an ideal place to begin your descent into Out For Blood.
The Prodigy
How hard will you fight when giving up seems easier?
In The Prodigy, street hustler Adam has nearly given up on life when he suddenly finds himself captive at the mercy of a deranged psychopath. Survival means finding a reason to keep fighting — and discovering just how far he’s willing to go to stay alive.
Filmmaker Omar Salas Zamora delivers a brutal queer thriller where desperation, survival and violence collide.
Ganymede
Coming out can be terrifying. Ganymede takes that fear and transforms it into an actual monster.
When a high school wrestling star develops feelings for an openly gay classmate, his burgeoning desires bring some horrifying consequences. Soon, a grotesque creature begins invading his thoughts, turning his struggle with sexuality, repression and fear into something frighteningly real.
Part coming-of-age story and part creature feature, Ganymede uses the language of horror to explore what happens when desire collides with the pressure to be someone you’re not.
Poltergays
Not every ghost story needs to be serious.
The wickedly funny short Poltergays turns the haunted-house formula on its head when Perry and Tiff Myers decide their friendly gay roommates, Tanner and Derek, must actually be malevolent spirits from the great beyond.
Their attempt to expose the supposed supernatural threat may ultimately reveal something considerably scarier: their own haunting homophobia.
Consider this your supernatural palate cleanser before heading back into the bloodier corners of the collection.
There’s a Zombie Outside
What if the monster you created suddenly followed you home?
During a camping trip with his boyfriend, filmmaker Adam spots a zombie lurking near their cabin. His friends chalk it up to stress and paranoia — until Adam returns to Los Angeles and realizes the zombie may have followed him.
There’s a Zombie Outside mixes horror and comedy with a distinctly queer, self-aware sensibility, blurring the line between filmmaking, identity and reality itself.
It’s strange, funny and just unsettling enough to make you wonder what’s waiting outside your own window.
The Deep Queer Massacre
Sometimes you want sophisticated psychological horror.
Sometimes you want horny gay guys, a witch’s manor, short-shorts, super-soakers and complete chaos.
The Deep Queer Massacre proudly belongs to the second category.
This deliberately outrageous horror-comedy sends a group of young gay men to a secluded vacation home in Normandy, where their fun quickly gives way to a series of increasingly bizarre horrors.
At just under half an hour, it’s the perfect dose of campy queer carnage for your Halloween movie marathon.
Carnal Sins
Folklore, religion, repression and forbidden desire collide in Carnal Sins.
After moving to a deeply religious community, young Nino discovers that beneath the town’s pious exterior lies a world simmering with secrets and repressed desires. Looming over it all is the legend of the Almamula, a mythological creature said to stalk the nearby forest.
Atmospheric and provocative, Carnal Sins uses supernatural folklore to explore sexuality, shame and the things communities would rather keep hidden.
Birder
An idyllic queer retreat takes a disturbing turn in Birder.
Set at a sex-positive queer nudist camp in the woods of New Hampshire, the film introduces a mysterious bird watcher whose arrival disrupts the retreat’s seemingly carefree atmosphere.
What follows is a sexually charged satirical thriller that steadily turns desire and vulnerability into something much more dangerous.
For viewers who like their thrillers provocative, uncomfortable and unpredictable, Birder belongs on the list.
The Black Widow
We finish our Halloween watchlist with something short, strange and decidedly twisted.
In The Black Widow, a student discovers a mysterious theater where the boundary between what’s happening on the screen and what’s happening around him begins to disappear.
As images of sadomasochism, murder and gay sex consume his thoughts, fear and arousal become increasingly difficult to separate.
At just over 20 minutes, it’s a surreal final nightmare for anyone willing to venture all the way to the darkest corner of Out For Blood.
Enter the Darker Side of Queer Cinema
Horror has always provided a place to explore the things we’re afraid to say out loud — desire, identity, repression, obsession and the monsters hiding just beneath the surface.
Dekkoo Selects: Out For Blood brings those themes together in nine wildly different films, from supernatural scares and psychological thrillers to queer horror-comedies that aren’t afraid to get bloody, sexy or completely ridiculous.
So turn down the lights.
Keep the doors locked.
And whatever you hear outside, don’t investigate.
Queer chills. Killer thrills. No one gets out clean.
Watch Dekkoo Selects: Out For Blood now on Dekkoo.
The wait is over.Scorch Marks, the haunting new Dekkoo Original starring Brandon Shypkowski and Chris Salvatore, is now streaming exclusively on Dekkoo.
Just in time for Halloween season, Dekkoo is heading somewhere darker.
Scorch Marks is a bold new queer horror film blending psychological terror, supernatural horror and post-apocalyptic suspense with an intensely personal story about trauma, toxic relationships and survival.
A Queer Horror Story About Surviving More Than the End of the World
When Beckett awakens to scorched skies and an eerie silence, he fears he may be the last person left alive after a mysterious global catastrophe.
But the end of the world may not be the most terrifying thing waiting for him.
Isolated in a remote rental, Beckett’s fragile grip on reality begins to unravel when he is confronted by the ghost of his abusive ex-husband, Joel. As an ancient, otherworldly force draws closer, Beckett is forced to confront the trauma of their relationship and decide whether survival means running from his demons—or finally facing them.
Written and directed by Brendan Haley, Scorch Marks takes the familiar language of apocalyptic and supernatural horror and places a distinctly queer relationship at the center of the nightmare.
For viewers looking for something darker among today’s gay movies streaming online, Scorch Marks brings queer storytelling into territory rarely explored in LGBTQ+ cinema.
Brandon Shypkowski Takes Us to the End of the World
At the center of Scorch Marks is Brandon Shypkowski as Beckett, a man whose fight for survival quickly becomes something far more personal.
Beckett isn’t simply trying to determine what happened to the world outside. He’s being forced to reckon with the emotional scars left behind by his relationship with Joel.
That gives Scorch Marks an intimacy that sets it apart from a traditional end-of-the-world thriller. The destruction outside Beckett’s door is terrifying, but the memories and trauma inside may prove even harder to escape.
Shypkowski carries that emotional journey through fear, isolation, vulnerability and rage, grounding the supernatural elements of the movie in something painfully human.
Chris Salvatore Like You’ve Never Seen Him Before
Chris Salvatore has long been a familiar and beloved face to gay audiences, but Scorch Marks gives viewers the chance to see him in a dramatically different kind of role.
Salvatore stars as Joel, Beckett’s abusive ex-husband, whose return transforms Beckett’s isolation into a psychological nightmare.
It’s a darker and more unsettling turn for an actor many LGBTQ+ viewers know from romantic comedies and gay cinema, and that contrast makes Joel’s presence even more unnerving.
The relationship between Beckett and Joel ultimately becomes the beating heart of the film. Beneath the blood, supernatural terror and apocalyptic imagery is a story about what happens when love, control, resentment, fear and trauma become impossible to separate.
Queer Horror Gets Apocalyptic
Horror has always had a special relationship with queer audiences.
Stories about outsiders, identity, transformation, secrets, isolation and survival naturally lend themselves to queer interpretation. Scorch Marks takes that connection and makes it explicit.
This isn’t simply a horror movie that happens to feature gay characters. The relationship at its center—and the wounds it leaves behind—are essential to the story.
The result is a gay psychological horror movie that combines the scale of an apocalypse with the claustrophobia of a damaged relationship.
And things only become stranger from there.
The film also stars Vander Von Odd as Tiamat, alongside Peter Stickles and horror favorite Tiffany Shepis, as Beckett’s increasingly terrifying reality expands beyond anything he could have imagined.
Another Original Story You Can Only Find on Dekkoo
Scorch Marks is part of Dekkoo’s continuing commitment to bringing audiences distinctive LGBTQ+ stories and supporting filmmakers telling stories centered on queer lives.
From romance and comedy to drama, thrillers and now apocalyptic horror, Dekkoo Originals continue to push gay cinema into new territory.
Looking for more? Browse gay movies on Dekkoo and discover hundreds of LGBTQ+ films, series, documentaries and exclusive originals available to stream.
There’s something about a stranger who catches your eye—and refuses to leave your mind.
Now streaming on Dekkoo, A King, Gazing at the Sea (Le roi qui contemplait la mer) is a sensual French gay short film from writer-director Jean-Sébastien Chauvin about attraction, obsession, and the intoxicating pull of the male gaze.
A Seaside Encounter Becomes an Obsession
Paul arrives at a sun-drenched Mediterranean seaside resort looking to enjoy a few quiet moments by the water. Then he sees him: a muscular, tanned stranger whose presence immediately captures his attention.
What begins as a passing attraction gradually becomes something much more consuming.
Set against the gorgeous Mediterranean coast, A King, Gazing at the Sea explores that uniquely charged space between looking and longing—when desire for someone you barely know begins to take on a life of its own.
Written and directed by Jean-Sébastien Chauvin, the 24-minute French short stars Loïc Djani and Lefteris Polychronis.
A King, Gazing at the Sea was selected for the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival and screened at Frameline47, San Francisco’s international LGBTQ+ film festival.
Chauvin turns a deceptively simple encounter into a dreamy meditation on gay desire. Sun, sea, skin, stolen glances and fantasy combine to create a film that feels both intimate and slightly dangerous—the kind of attraction where you’re never quite sure whether you’re watching someone or imagining an entire world around them.
Discover More Gay Short Films on Dekkoo
If A King, Gazing at the Sea leaves you wanting more, explore Dekkoo’s growing collection of gay short films from around the world, featuring stories of romance, desire, identity, sex, friendship and queer life.
Now streaming on Dekkoo,Give Me Your Hand(Donne-moi la main) is a striking French coming-of-age drama that explores brotherhood, sexuality, jealousy and the complicated process of discovering who you are.
Directed by Pascal-Alex Vincent, the film follows 18-year-old twin brothers Antoine and Quentin as they leave their quiet French village behind and hitchhike across France toward Spain to attend the funeral of their estranged mother.
What begins as a shared journey soon exposes just how different the seemingly inseparable brothers have become.
Antoine and Quentin live with their father and work in his bakery in rural France. When they learn that the mother they barely knew has died in Spain, the twins secretly set out to attend her funeral.
Traveling largely by foot and hitchhiking, the brothers encounter strangers, new experiences and unexpected opportunities for sexual discovery.
But the further they travel, the more their differences begin to emerge.
Their intense bond is complicated by rivalry, jealousy and their developing sexual identities. When Quentin has an encounter with another young man, the experience creates an especially difficult divide between the brothers.
Their physical journey toward Spain gradually becomes something much more personal: a struggle to understand themselves—and to accept that growing up may mean growing apart.
A Different Kind of Gay Coming-of-Age Film
Give Me Your Hand is less interested in conventional romance than it is in the uncertainty surrounding desire.
Director Pascal-Alex Vincent approaches Antoine and Quentin’s story with sparse dialogue and striking imagery, allowing glances, gestures and physical interactions to reveal what the brothers often cannot—or will not—say aloud.
The result is part road movie, part coming-of-age drama and part exploration of male intimacy.
The French and Spanish countryside provides the backdrop as Antoine and Quentin move through a world that seems increasingly larger than the small village they left behind.
For viewers who enjoy atmospheric gay movies, international LGBTQ+ cinema and unconventional coming-of-age stories, Give Me Your Hand offers something distinctive.
Adding another dimension to the film is the casting of real-life twin brothers Alexandre Carril and Victor Carril as Antoine and Quentin.
The two actors had previously appeared together in director Pascal-Alex Vincent’s short film Bébé Requin (Baby Shark), which competed for the Palme d’Or for short films at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
Their natural familiarity gives Give Me Your Hand an unusual physical intimacy. Affection, rivalry, aggression and dependence frequently overlap, reinforcing the sense that Antoine and Quentin are attempting to establish individual identities after spending their lives defined as a pair.
The film also stars Anaïs Demoustier, alongside Samir Harrag, Katrin Sass and Fernando Ramallo.
From France to Spain
Originally released as Donne-moi la main, Give Me Your Hand was the feature-film debut of French filmmaker Pascal-Alex Vincent.
The film was selected for international festivals including the Torino Film Festival, New Directors/New Films in New York and the Kiev Molodist International Film Festival.
Vincent combines elements of the classic road movie with queer coming-of-age cinema, animation and a moody electronic soundtrack by German post-rock duo Tarwater.
Much of the film unfolds outdoors, giving the twins’ journey an almost dreamlike quality as they move through fields, roads, train stations and unfamiliar towns on their way south.
Brotherhood, Sexuality and Growing Apart
At the center of Give Me Your Hand is a deceptively simple question: What happens when two people who have always defined themselves through one another begin becoming different people?
For Antoine and Quentin, sexuality becomes part of that separation.
Their encounters along the road reveal desires and attractions that don’t necessarily align, forcing both brothers to confront a changing relationship neither fully understands.
Rather than offering easy answers, the film allows those tensions to remain complicated. Desire mixes with jealousy. Affection turns into anger. Independence can feel like rejection.
It’s an intimate portrait of two young men reaching the point where being brothers—and even identical twins—no longer means following the same path.
Watch Give Me Your Hand on Dekkoo
Give Me Your Hand is now streaming on Dekkoo, alongside hundreds of gay films, LGBTQ+ series, international discoveries, festival favorites and Dekkoo Originals.
Subscribers can also watch the new Dekkoo Presents: Give Me Your Hand, a brief introduction to the film available alongside the feature.
A provocative and intimate gay romance has arrived on Dekkoo.
Sauna, the acclaimed Danish drama from director Mathias Broe, is now streaming on Dekkoo. Set within Copenhagen’s vibrant queer nightlife, the film explores desire, intimacy, identity, and what happens when an unexpected connection challenges the boundaries we build around ourselves.
Johan (Magnus Juhl Andersen) is young, gay, and enjoying everything Copenhagen has to offer. Bars, parties, hookups and one-night stands give him seemingly endless opportunities for connection without commitment.
He has also begun working as a receptionist at Adonis, a gay sauna where the boundaries between work, sex and pleasure can easily disappear.
Then he meets William (Nina Rask), a transgender man who introduces Johan to a kind of intimacy he wasn’t expecting.
What begins as attraction quickly becomes something deeper, forcing Johan to reconsider not only what he wants from another person, but some of his assumptions about desire, masculinity and belonging.
Sauna isn’t simply a story about falling in love. It’s about what happens after desire becomes complicated.
One of the things that makes Sauna distinctive is its willingness to explore queer desire without turning its characters into symbols.
Johan’s relationship with William brings him into parts of Copenhagen’s queer and trans communities that are unfamiliar to him. Their attraction is real, but so are the tensions that begin to surface as they navigate sex, identity, friendship and the expectations of the communities around them.
Director Mathias Broe allows those contradictions to remain complicated.
The result is a sensual, sometimes uncomfortable and deeply human portrait of two people attempting to understand one another while still figuring themselves out.
For viewers looking for gay romance movies, international gay films and LGBTQ+ stories willing to venture beyond conventional love stories, Sauna offers something refreshingly complex.
Sauna made its world premiere in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, introducing international audiences to director Mathias Broe’s feature debut.
Broe co-wrote the screenplay with William Lippert, adapting the novel by Danish author Mads Ananda Lodahl.
The Copenhagen setting is an essential part of the film. Gay bars, apartments, dating apps, parties and the Adonis sauna create a world where sexual freedom appears almost limitless. Yet Sauna gradually asks a more difficult question: Does having endless opportunities for sex necessarily make finding genuine intimacy any easier?
That tension between sexual freedom and emotional vulnerability sits at the heart of the film.
Meet the Cast of Sauna
Magnus Juhl Andersen stars as Johan, with Nina Rask as William. The cast also includes Dilan Amin, Klaus Tange, Peter Oliver Hansen, Morten Burian, Billie N. Hviid Andersen, Theo Suissa and Anton Hjejle.
Andersen and Rask anchor the film with performances that allow Johan and William’s relationship to feel physical, vulnerable and imperfect.
Rather than presenting an idealized romance, Sauna allows attraction and affection to exist alongside jealousy, uncertainty and mistakes — giving the relationship a messiness that feels recognizably human.
Why Sauna Belongs on Your Watchlist
Sauna joins a growing collection of international gay cinema available to stream on Dekkoo.
If you enjoy films about complicated relationships, queer identity, sexual discovery and characters who don’t always make the right decisions, Sauna is a film worth discovering.
It’s romantic without becoming sentimental, sexy without treating sex as decoration, and thoughtful without providing easy answers about the people at its center.
Most importantly, Sauna treats queer desire as something worthy of being explored in all its complexity.
Watch Sauna on Dekkoo
Ready to enter Johan and William’s world?
WatchSaunanow on Dekkoo and discover one of the most provocative queer romances to emerge from contemporary Danish cinema.
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