Award Winner – Page 12 – Discover great gay stories.

A weekend of mischief becomes a battle for survival in the stylish British thriller ‘B&B’

A gay couple pays a price for exercising their rights in this award-winning thriller from writer-director Joe Ahearne.

Sean Teale and Tom Bateman star in B&B as partners Fred and Marc. A year before the main events of the film, they were denied a room at St. Jude bed and breakfast by its fundamentalist Christian owner Josh (Paul McGann). They took the matter to court, won a discrimination suit and have now returned.

Though Fred would happily take the victory and move on, Marc is excited to rub some salt in Josh’s wound – insisting on sleeping as a married couple in the home of a man who has made his resentment known.

Events take a deadly turn when another guest, with far more sinister intentions, arrives. Marc and Fred’s weekend of fun turns into a suspenseful battle for survival.

With plenty of twists and turns, this clever Hitchcock homage will keep you guessing to the bitter end.

Watch the trailer for B&B below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: Pipes

Fast-paced and visually inventive, Pipes, an impressively animated black and white short from co-directors Jessica Meier, Kilian Feusi and Sujanth Ravichandran, is packed with deliciously funny incident.

The 4-minute, dialog-free film follows an anthropomorphic cartoon bear who works as a plumber and is tasked with fixing the pipes at a kinky gay nightclub.

Shocked at the hedonistic display of gay pleasure on the dance floor, a fear of the unknown soon takes him over. His mind wanders down a kaleidoscopic rabbit hole of gay panic where pipes become body parts and body parts become pipes before he comes to his senses and realizes that there was never anything to be afraid of in the first place.

Cleverly-crafted, the film builds a bizarre cartoon world you won’t soon forget. If you’re never seen an animated alien do poppers before, you’re in for a weirdly specific treat!

Check out the poster for Pipes below. The short film is now streaming on Dekkoo. And, despite the cuddly characters and the positive message, be warned that this film is for grown-up viewers only.

A man attempts a turbulent journey out of the closet in the moving drama ‘El Houb (The Love)’

Having spent decades hiding his sexuality from his family, Moroccan-Dutch businessman Karim (Fahd Larhzaoui) decides to come clean after his father catches him in bed with a man.

Caught up in a panic over the thought of coming out to his traditional Muslim parents (Slimane Dazi and Lubna Azabal), he barricades himself in their closet… literally.

As he feverishly revisits his childhood memories, negotiates a budding romance with a new Ghanaian boyfriend (Emmanuel Boafo) and wages a long-delayed battle royale to uproot his family’s conservative attitudes, a series of darkly hilarious and unflinchingly frank conversations begin – and the family is finally forced to confront the truths that have so long been avoided.

Loosely based on the theater work and actual experiences of lead actor and co-screenwriter Fahd Larhzaoui, El Houb (The Love) cascades through time. Director Shariff Nasr manages to straddle a line between uproarious comedy and heartbreaking drama while examining family dynamics, cultural taboos and hard-won self-acceptance.

Watch the trailer for El Houb (The Love) below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

‘Every Act of Life’ celebrates the career and friendships of legendary playwright Terrence McNally

Through six groundbreaking decades in the theatre, four-time Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally became a living legend, both on stage and off.

He launched the careers of some of Broadway’s biggest stars, was a pioneer in the fight for LGBTQ rights, triumphed over addiction, found love and inspiration at every age and continually showed the power of art to transform society.

Featuring interviews with Nathan Lane, Patrick Wilson, Edie Falco, Rita Moreno, Christine Baranski, F. Murray Abraham, Bryan Cranston and many more, Every Act of Life is an intimate and illuminating documentary that celebrates McNally’s life and relationships while examining his incredible legacy of work.

Watch the trailer for Every Act of Life below. The documentary is now streaming on Dekkoo.

A well-to-do gay couple cause neighborhood conflicts in the dark comedy ‘Concerned Citizen’

Concerned Citizen follows Ben and Raz (Shlomi Bertonov and Ariel Wolf), a young, attractive and financially secure gay couple who move to a migrant neighborhood in Tel Aviv.

After buying a renovated apartment, they begin to seek a surrogate to help them start a family. Their attempt to create a cozy life is disrupted, however, when Ben, looking to beautify his new street, plants a sapling on their corner.

The tree is not welcomed by all and soon becomes a source of conflict. When matters turn physical, Ben gets the police involved. The situation thrusts his internal prejudices to the surface, racking the liberally-minded Ben with guilt, and forcing him to grapple with his own complicity in the systems of oppression surrounding him.

Winner of the Best Screenplay Prize at the Jerusalem Film Festival, Israeli director Idan Haguel’s film is a morally complex, refreshingly smart dark comedy about personal responsibility and the uneasy balance between assuming the identity of a “concerned” citizenry and the adoption of a victim complex.

Concerned Citizen is a challenging, satirical parable for our times, with themes as relevant to contemporary Tel Aviv as any large city in the world.

Watch the trailer for Concerned Citizen below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Survivors speak out in director David France’s riveting documentary ‘Welcome to Chechnya’

With searing urgency and uncommon bravery, the eye-opening documentary Welcome to Chechnya shadows a group of activists who risk unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ purge raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic.

Since 2017, Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has waged a depraved operation to “cleanse the blood” of LGBTQ Chechens, overseeing a campaign to detain, torture and execute them. Operating without the sanction of the Kremlin, activists take matters into their own hands.

In this riveting and deeply affecting piece of work, David France, the acclaimed, award-winning director behind How to Survive a Plague, uses a remarkable hands-on approach to expose this atrocity and tell the story of an extraordinary group of people literally putting their lives on the line to confront evil and make not just Chechnya, but the whole world a better place for the LGBTQ community.

Watch the trailer for Welcome to Chechnya below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Five filmmakers explore male sexuality and longing in the collection ‘Furious Desires’

The concept of desire is explored to the fullest in Furious Desires, a collection of five international short films exploring male sexuality and longing.

In Brazilian filmmaker Fabio Leal’s The Daytime Doorman, a man pushes past boundaries with someone who works in his apartment building. Also from Brazil, Ricky Mastro’s film Xavier and Miguel follows a teen who is ready to tell the world about the secret feelings he has for his best friend.

The Other Side, from Mexican director Rodrigo Alvarez Flores, chronicles the romance between two young men who will not let the border come between their love. Mexican filmmaker Denisse Quintero’s The Tiger’s Fight is centered around a homoerotic harvest ritual where village men are expected fight one another.

Finally, from Italian director Simone Bozzelli, Loris is Fine follows a naïve 20-year-old whose need for affection drives him to make some life-altering choices.

With all of the shorts combined together, this stylish and diverse collection runs a total of 91 minutes… and will surely leave you with some desires of your own.

Check out these select stills from each of the five featured short films below. Furious Desires is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Warm up your winter with François Ozon’s new queer classic ‘Summer of 85’

Two teenage boys meet on the coast of Normandy and experience a life-changing summer in this sexy and gorgeously-crafted ode to youth from François Ozon, the celebrated French auteur behind ‘Swimming Pool,’ ‘8 Women,’ ‘Double Lover’ and many more.

Set in 1985, the film is told from the romantic, nostalgia-shaded perspective of 16-year-old Alexis (Félix Lefebvre). Unsure whether to pursue his literary aspirations in school or get a job to appease his blue-collar dad, Alexis is at a crossroads – and desperate for affection.

When he meets David (Benjamin Voisin), a dashing stranger who rescues him at sea, his potentially dull summer is upended. He’s quickly thrust into the alluring and enigmatic world of his new friend. Soon, the boys’ flirtatious friendship blossoms into something much more, yet David’s charismatic demeanor belies a mercurial, tempestuous side that threatens to blight their idyllic summer fling.

Ozon inventively blends breezy teen romance with a looming mystery while cutting back and forth between past and present so that the pieces of the puzzle don’t fall into place until the film’s unforgettable, emotionally devastating climax.

Summer of 85 is an electric ode to youth, self-discovery, and the possibilities that lay in front of us all.

Watch the trailer for Summer of 85 below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Raúl Castillo and Sheila Vand star in the powerful coming-of-age drama ‘We the Animals’

Featuring riveting performances from Sheila Vand and Raul Castillo, We the Animals follows three boys who tear through their rural New York hometown while their young parents’ volatile relationship makes and unmakes the family many times over.

While Manny and Joel grow into versions of their loving and unpredictable father, Ma seeks to keep her youngest, Jonah, in the cocoon of home. More sensitive and conscious than his older siblings, Jonah increasingly embraces an imagined world all his own.

With a screenplay by Dan Kitrosser and Jeremiah Zagar based on the celebrated novel by Justin Torres, We the Animals is a visceral coming-of-age story propelled by layered performances from its astounding cast – including three talented, young first-time actors – and stunning animated sequences which bring Jonah’s torn inner world to life.

Drawing from his documentary background, director Jeremiah Zagar creates an immersive portrait of working class family life and brotherhood.

Watch the trailer for We the Animals below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

François Ozon’s underseen masterpiece ‘Frantz’ is now available on Dekkoo

Set in Germany and France in the immediate aftermath of World War I, Frantz recalls the mourning period that follows great national tragedies as seen through the eyes of Anna, played by Paula Beer in a breakthrough performance.

A bereft young German woman whose fiancé, Frantz, was killed during trench warfare, she’s surprised to find Adrien, a French veteran played by Pierre Niney, laying flowers at her late lover’s grave.

Adrien’s presence is met with resistance by the small community still reeling from Germany’s defeat, yet Anna gradually gets closer to the handsome and melancholy young man, as she learns of his deep friendship with Frantz, conjured up in evocative flashbacks.

What follows is a surprising exploration of how these characters wrestle with their conflicting feelings – survivor’s guilt, anger at one’s losses, the overriding desire for happiness despite everything that has come before, and the longing for sexual, romantic and familial attachments.

Stylishly shot in black and white, prolific director Francois Ozon drew his inspiration for the film from a post-WWI play by Maurice Rostand that also inspired the 1932 Ernst Lubitsch film Broken Lullaby.

Watch the trailer for Frantz below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.