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Watch five award-winning coming-of-age short films in the new Through a Boy’s Eyes collection

When a boy becomes a young man, the way he sees the world can change – not just his perceptions of those around him, but how others see him as well. As burgeoning desires come to the surface, he has the choice of either embracing and acting upon them, or burying them.

In Through a Boy’s Eyes, a selection of award-winning short films, different directors examine the struggles and celebrations seen through the eyes of boys not only becoming men, but becoming attracted to them. This new collection includes…

On the Roof
It’s summer time and Adrián and his friends spend almost every afternoon climbing onto a rooftop to spy a girl who sunbathes naked. But this afternoon won’t be like the others. Today they’ll realize that one of them is more interested in the guy showering in a close-by building.

The Son
Pedro is a 17-year-old at the tail end of high school. The thing he loves most in the world are his mother’s baked beans. He hasn’t tried each one, but there is no need. Pedro knows what he likes. His father, however, doesn’t feel the same way.

Inside
Juan is a seductive and cold man who easily attracts women. But his mind is immersed in a spiral of emotions and experiences that will force him to discover who he truly is and find his real identity, suppressed by his father’s strong conservative education.

Tomboy
10-year-old Chloe plays soccer, spits, never cries and can’t stand other girls – the so-called “cry-babies.” One day, Marie, a pretty and perky blonde girl, takes part for the first time in the games Chloe plays with the boys. Her femininity unsettles Chloe’s self-confidence and the balance of their small group of children.

Paradigma
Innocence, sex and lust converge to tell the story of Guille, a teen who seeks himself through the eyes of others.

All five short films are available now on Dekkoo in the Through a Boy’s Eyes collection. Watch the official trailer below.

Everyone’s favorite crime-solving gay bears are back for Season 5!

From the creative team of Rick Copp (The Brady Bunch Movie), Joe Dietl (Mom, Maron) and Ben Zook (Jack and Jill) comes Where the Bears Are, a comedy mystery web series that has accumulated over 40 million loyal viewers since it first premiered in 2012 and won the “Best Gay Web Series” award from After Elton.

At the start of Season 5, The honeymoon is definitely over for Nelson and Todd (Ben Zook and Ian Parks) when one of the grooms vanishes without a trace only to turn up with a shocking confession! America’s favorite gay bears find themselves in a dangerous world of international intrigue chasing clues that take them to the party town of Palm Springs, Los Angeles and ultimately to a wild west showdown in a deserted ghost town right in the heart of Mexico!

Watch the trailer for Season 5 below. The first five seasons are available now on Dekkoo – with more to come!

Now Available: The Sea

This new drama from Chilean director Marco Antonio Nunez follows a young couple who decide to start a new beginning by the sea, but soon find erotic complications.

Lorena (Ana Burgos) is trying to finish up an art project and finds her new small town on the coast of Chile a perfect place to focus on the task. Meanwhile, her hunky partner Diego (Marcelo Gutierrez) gets a job at the library and begins to endear himself to the close-knit community.

The pair soon find their relationship tested, however, when Diego begins to develop feelings for a handsome young local man named Vicente (Francisco Danobeitia). What begins as a passionate clandestine affair comes to a dramatic, inevitable head when all three go on a camping trip together and the truth begins rising to the surface.

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

Now Available: Monster Pies

Does anyone ever forget the time they felt the incredible force of first love?

When Mike (Tristan Barr) learns that his English teacher is pairing him up for a class assignment on ‘Romeo and Juliet’ William (Lucas Linehan), the super-cute new kids on school, Mike can’t believe his luck!

As the two young men spend more and more time working together on a monster movie version of the Bard’s classic tale, they soon realize that their feelings for one another may be more powerful than either of them is truly ready for.

From Australian writer-director Lee Galea, who based his screenplay on a short story he has written when he was 15 years old and deep into the themes of the movie on a personal level, Monster Pies is a touching and original take on the all encompassing power of teen love – one that is sure to move even the hardest of hearts.

The film was originally released back in 2013 (almost ten years ago!) when it earned awards – and a whole lot of tears – at film festivals all around the globe.

Watch the trailer for Monster Pies below. The film is available now on Dekkoo.

Don’t miss the gripping, layered and beautifully honest award-winning drama José

Winner of multiple awards, including the Queer Lion from the 75th Annual Venice Film Festival, José is a gripping, layered and beautifully honest story about one working class young man’s struggle to find himself. Made in the neorealist filmmaking tradition, the film delivers a nuanced and vivid look at being gay in Central America.

José (played by magnetic newcomer Enrique Salanic) lives with his mother (Ana Cecilia Mota) in Guatemala City, where they survive on her selling sandwiches at bus stops and with him working at a local restaurant. It is a poor and sometimes dangerous country where, dominated by conservative Catholic and Evangelical Christian religion, living one’s life as an openly gay man is hard for José to imagine.

His mother has never had a husband. And though José is at the edge of manhood at 19-years old, he is her youngest and favorite child and she is determined to hold on to him.

Reserved and private, José fills his free moments playing with his phone and random sex with other men arranged on street corners and dating apps. When he meets attractive and gentle Luis (Manolo Herrera), a migrant from the rural Caribbean coast, they pursue an unexpected relationship with more emotion than José has ever felt. He is quickly thrust into new passion, pain and self-reflection that push him to rethink his life even as he is reluctant to take a leap of faith.

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

Xavier Dolan’s sensational feature debut I Killed My Mother hits Dekkoo

Released in 2009, I Killed My Mother was the semi-autobiographical debut feature film by then 20-year-old Xavier Dolan – who quickly became a breakthrough star director on the international film scene.

Focusing on the relationship between Hubert Minel (Dolan), a 16-year-old Quebecois living in suburban Montreal, and his single mother Chantale (Anne Dorval), I Killed My Mother beautifully captures the anxieties of a mother-son relationship.

While he gauges her with contempt, only seeing her out-of-date sweater and kitschy decor, the ingrained mechanisms (i.e. manipulation and guilt) of their relationship beautifully (and tragically) unravel on the big screen.

After the film’s debut, I Killed My Mother was nominated for dozens of film festival awards all over the globe and quickly became a sensation. Dolan has gone on to make many more features, often with major Hollywood stars. He has also had some other big acting opportunities in films like Bad Times at the El Royale and It: Chapter Two.

Watch the trailer for I Killed My Mother below. The film is available now on Dekkoo.

A new short-form comedy series celebrates the power of drag

Starring Prescott Seymour (also known by their famed drag persona “Sutton Lee Seymour”) and writer/creator John Wascavage as the series leads, What a Drag is a brand-new comedy web series available now on Dekkoo! A short form digital series, the first season features seven episodes, all five to eight minutes in length.

What A Drag follows Preston (Seymour), a brassy drag queen, and Ben (Wascavage), an on-again-off-again actor, as they navigate the insane she-nanigans life throws at them.

From makeup mishaps, to dating nightmarish social media influencers, to a blindsiding medical diagnosis, these two queens make lemon-drop-martinis out of lemons as they untuck the power of found family.

Based on true events, the comedic series explores the power of the art form of drag within the queer community. In a time when drag has never been more mainstream, What A Drag peels back the curtain and focuses in on one of drag’s most magical aspects: its ability to transcend.

Watch the trailer for What a Drag below. The full first season is available now on Dekkoo.

Now Available: Parallel Sons

A gay indie classic and film festival favorite from 1995, Parallel Sons follows the relationship that develops between a white teen who identifies as black and a young black man who has been wounded while escaping prison.

Seth (Gabriel Mann) is a youth with artistic leanings, a fascination with Black pop culture and a dead-end life in an Adirondack village. He’s alternatively sensitive and brutal with Kristen (Heather Gottlieb), who wants a sexual relationship that he explosively rejects.

Late one night, as he’s closing the cafe where he works, a young Black man attempts to rob him at gun point but faints from illness. Seth takes the man, Knowledge (Laurence Mason), an escapee from a nearby prison, to a family cabin where he nurses him and they begin a tentative friendship. When the sheriff learns of Seth’s harboring a fugitive, a major confrontation looms.

Watch the original trailer for Parallel Sons below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: GUO4

A confrontation between two swimmers in a locker room ends in tears in the experimental short film/pseudo-music video GUO4.

The film is directed by Peter Strickland, the acclaimed British filmmaker behind Berberian Sound Studio, The Duke of Burgundy, In Fabric and the upcoming Flux Gourmet. Using only still frames and the sounds of avant-garde music duo GUO, the film depicts an act of male aggression that can’t help but double as a homoerotic wrestling match.

“The framing of traditionally macho scenarios in a homoerotic context takes its cues from the covert porn of Bob Mizer,” said Strickland. “With his films in mind, I wanted to make something arousing that could be disguised as a morality tale about the impudence of ‘manspreading’ in locker rooms. The combination of muscle and beat-up lockers somehow evoked the music in my mind.”

GUO is the duo of guitarist and singer Daniel Blumberg and saxophonist Seymour Wright. Both use heavy distortion and extreme amplification which is later processed and manipulated with metal cassettes to create a multi-layered, lacquered object of sinister, fizzing, metallic beauty.

Check out the poster for GUO4 below. The film is available now on Dekkoo.

Watch a thirty-second trailer for the brand-new Dekkoo-Original short comedy Thirty Candles

From director Jono Mitchell and screenwriter Madison Hatfield, the brand-new 13-minute short comedy Thirty Candles is a charming homage to the John Hughes classic Sixteen Candles, but with a decidedly gay twist.

Baker (Brandon Lee Browning) is turning 30 today… and he’s not thrilled about it. His long-distance best friend Hugh (DeMarius Copes) calls him up bright and early to celebrate and preemptively offset the birthday blues, but it’s no use. The ladies at the office seems to be planning some kind of embarrassing workplace surprise party. Sucking it up, Baker puts on his snazziest suit and sets off to work… only to find that the party is not for him, but a pregnant co-worker. What’s worse than everyone making a big deal out of your 30th birthday? No one remembering!

Luckily for Baker, the one person that does seem to remember his special day is Mike Bryan (Lee Osorio), the handsome IT guy of his deepest romantic fantasies. Suddenly, this milestone birthday might go from being the worst ever to the best.

With witty writing and charismatic performances, Thirty Candles is a clever and heartwarming short rom-com worth savoring. Watch a 30-second trailer for the film below. The full short is now streaming on Dekkoo.