kcousins

Now Available: French director André Téchiné’s acclaimed coming-of-age drama ‘Being 17’

From André Téchiné, the renowned writer-director behind the queer classic Wild Reeds, comes Being 17, a moving exploration of unexpected adolescent love.

Damien and Thomas (Kacey Mottet Klein and Corentin Fila) are teens from very different backgrounds who go to the same school… and are constantly fighting. Damien is the gawky son of a doctor and a military pilot stationed abroad. He can’t seem to stop staring at Thomas, the handsome bi-racial son of local farmers who reacts with hostility to Damien’s longing.

Damien’s mother Marianne (Sandrine Kiberlain) is treating Thomas’s ailing mother at the farm, a snowy two-hour ride outside of town. When she needs to be admitted to the hospital, Marianne quite naturally offers to take Thomas into their home for a temporary stay. Forced to live together under one roof, the two boys must work through their hostility, emerging attraction and complicated desires.

Co-written by Celine Sciamma, the award-winning filmmaker behind Tomboy, Petite Maman and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Being 17 is a critically-acclaimed coming-of-age gem that accurately captures both youthful friction and attraction.

Watch the trailer for Being 17 below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

Get ready to dive into LGBTQ+ history with the upcoming Dekkoo-original series Historical Homos!

A brand-new Dekkoo-original video podcast series from Executive Producer Zachary Quinto, Historical Homos is a no-fucks-given guide to LGBTQ+ history! Hosts Donal Brophy and Sebastian Hendra are proud to introduce you to some of the gayest stories never told.

Buckle up for one of the most infamous-and lesser-known-gay couples in Greek mythology: Zeus and Ganymede, originators of the divine Daddy-Twink dichotomy. In Episode 1 of Historical Homos, we’ll discover what these myths tell us about ancient Greek homosexuality and how they provided much-needed PR for the complex reality between mortal sheets.

Episode Two tells the unbelievably wild and weird life story of the Chevalier d’Éon, transgender spy, soldier and sleuth of the Enlightenment. Assigned male at birth, Charles eventually transitioned to become Charlotte, before discovering the humiliating constraints of life as an 18th century woman.

William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe were both brilliant dramatists… and maybe bisexual? In Episode Three, we unpack the rumors, the hearsay and the straight-up gay poems that suggest these titans of English literature were also ridiculously good-looking… and gay.

Finally, Episode 4 offers up a review of the life and loves of Virginia Woolf. We dive deep into her affair with Vita Sackville-West, leading London lesbian of her day, and relive the parties thrown by the Bloomsbury Set, a group of young Modernists who continued the British tradition of plumbing the nation’s bottomless depths of homosexuality. (Or should we say bottom-full?)

The first episode of Historical Homos drops on June 9th with new episodes coming each week throughout the month of June!

Now Available: Dekkoo’s Seductive Shorts Collection

Dekkoo has a wealth of short films on offer from all around the globe – inventive and inspiring works of queer cinematic expression you won’t find anywhere else!

With such a vast library, it can be hard to know where to dive in. We’re sending you straight into the deep end with this collection of our most Seductive Shorts!

Youthful regrets, raunchy online encounters and the intersection between queerness and age are explored in the experimental shorts camchat and As I Sat in My Car. Sparks fly as men come together for a little romance in Rubber Dolphin, Foreign Lovers and Is This a Date. Steamy relationships from the past haunt the present in both Just Me and Let’s Meet Again at the End of the World.

Max follows a recent divorcee who hires a male escort. Open Relationship sees a couple considering exactly what the title suggests. Plum follows a fleeting encounter between two hot young men with opposing views on love. And finally His Hands and Fish Tank both explore strange hook-ups that have the potential to turn dangerous… or dangerously sexy.

Catch up on all the steamy action with our Seductive Shorts collection – available now on Dekkoo!

Don’t miss the deliciously sexy new Dekkoo-original series ‘We Will Never Die’

Sascha Weingarten stars in the brand-new Dekkoo-original series We Will Never Die as Philipp, a seductive, but dangerous criminal from Germany who catches the eye of an Italian tourist named Luca (Jacopo Garfagnoli) while vacationing on the Greek island of Rhodes.

What begins as an innocent encounter between the two ends up taking a sinister turn when Luca witnesses an illicit drug deal. A deadly game of cat and mouse is soon set in motion – continuing in Germany where more men are unexpectedly pulled into harm’s way.

A deliciously twisted new offering from the mind of prolific filmmaker Tor Iben (the German director behind films like The Visitor, Orpheus’ Song, The Passenger and The Year I Lost My Mind), We Will Never Die is a sexually-charged international gay action-thriller that will keep you guessing until the bitter end.

Watch the trailer for We Will Never Die below. The full five-episode first season is available now on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: Nanoblood

From writer Nick Roth and director Lindsay Haun, Nanoblood is a short film that tosses comedy, neo-noir, horror and sci-fi all into the blender at once, telling the story of three young lovers and the bots that tear them apart.

Not for the squeamish (expect lots of blood and some thrillingly Cronenberg-influenced body horror), this 38-minute film follows Gary (Anthony Rutowicz), a painter recently out of a day job, and his wife Lisa (Amanda Fuller), a graduate student in nanobiology.

Lisa’s funding is contingent on her participation in an experimental trial to replace her blood cells with microscopic, artificially intelligent robots. When the pair decide to make some extra cash by renting Gary’s painting studio out to Toby (Gabriel Miller), a mysterious visiting scholar also participating in Lisa’s clinical trial, their bodies begin to change in unexpected ways… and sexual desire begins to emerge in unexpected places.

Ambitious, provocative, sexually-frank and surprisingly timely, Nanoblood tells a large, inventive sci-fi story on an intimate scale.

Watch the trailer for Nanoblood below. The full short film is available now on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: Our Way Back

An intense 26-minute thriller from Israeli director Moshe Rosenthal, Our Way Back follows two secret lovers who find themselves in a life-or-death situation.

Lior Ashkenazi stars as Uri, a 50-year-old family man in a secret romantic relationship with the much-younger Oded, played by Shachar Netz.

Telling his wife that he’s going away for a business conference, Uri whisks Oded away to the desert, where the two can express their love for one another freely, away from the prying eyes of their small, close-knit community.

When Oded suffers a serious accident, it puts not only their affair, but his very life in jeopardy. Now Uri is faced with a major decision. He can call for help and risk being exposed, or let go of the man he loves in the most heartless way possible.

Our Way Back is now available on Dekkoo.

A romantic weekend getaway turns sinister in the gay thriller Complete Strangers

Writer-director Pau Masó also stars in this new gay thriller Complete Strangers as Robert, a recovering alcoholic from Budapest who returns home to reconnect with some friends.

While there, he also happens to meet the enigmatic Hugo (Matthew Crawley), a tall blue-eyed stranger who quickly gains his trust by giving him the attention he craves most.

Their courtship moves unusually fast. Soon into their passionate relationship, Robert willingly accepts Hugo’s proposal of a weekend getaway – against the advice of his inner circle. What begins as an idyllic weekend takes a sinister turn when Hugo’s true intentions are revealed. Not everything is as it seems on the surface.

Sexy and suspenseful in equal measure, Complete Strangers is a stylish gay film that harkens back to the erotic thriller heyday of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

Watch the trailer for Complete Strangers below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: Aadat

Filmed in Pakistan in a matter-of-fact style, Aadat is a bracing 13-minute short from writer-director Iqran Rasheed.

Aadat tells the story of a deeply closeted young man from a conservative Muslim family. Gripped with unrealized desires, he dares to hire an attractive young sex worker. The two spend time together alone in a room, cautiously getting closer while fully aware of the risks involved.

A devastating film about one perfectly normal young man who is looking to explore his sexuality in a forbidding Islamic country, Aadat is a sobering and heartbreaking reminder of the basic freedoms that are still not afforded to gay men in many parts of the world today.

Watch a short trailer for Aadat below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

Ossan’s Love, a queer romantic comedy series from Hong Kong, comes to Dekkoo

Tin (Edan Lui) has been single his whole life. One day, he discovers that his boss secretly harbors romantic feelings and is even willing to leave his wife to be with him.

Tin confides this news to his friends, only to discover that his co-worker and flatmate, Muk is also deeply in love with him. Even though Tin has never ever thought about dating another man, he finds himself overwhelmed by his new popularity and slowly falling for the men who hold him dear.

Originally broadcast in Hong Kong, Ossan’s Love is a charming romantic series based on a Japanese drama of the same name. Both shows are notable as the first mainstream television series to feature gay love as a central storyline in their respective regions.

You can watch the full first season of Ossan’s Love now on Dekkoo!

Short Film Spotlight: Sleepover

An eight-minute short film from Swedish director Jimi Vall Peterson, Sleepover follows Emil and Adam, two seemingly straight young men who have been friends since junior high. After a night together at the movies, Emil decides he is going to crash at Adam’s apartment.

The two young men end up sharing a double bed. In the middle of the night, Emil awakens and his unspoken feelings for Adam start to become clear. But is he willing to test the boundaries of their friendship?

A simple, but well-executed short film Sleepover perfectly captures those youthful pangs of unrequited love.

Sleepover is now available on Dekkoo.