Category: Award Winner

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.

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.

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.

Browse The Classic Queer Cinema Collection – 9 Groundbreaking Films Now Available on Dekkoo!

Dekkoo isn’t just a source for entertainment. We also offer a deeply engaging crash course in queer cinema history!

Starting with Queens at Heart, an eye-opening short film offering a look into the lives of four trans women during the pre-Stonewall 1960s, and continuing through to director Ira Sachs electrifying 2012 relationship drama Keep the Lights On, this collection exemplifies some of the most important queer cinema of the past five decades.

Including films like the landmark 1973 docudrama A Bigger Splash and Todd Haynes’ brazenly original Poison, which took the 1991 Sundance Film Festival by storm and helped launch the New Queer Cinema movement, these pioneering selections offer up a vibrant and expansive trip through time.

You can browse The Classic Queer Cinema Collection right now on Dekkoo. All of the titles are currently streaming.

The powerful gay drama The Last Match celebrates it’s 10th anniversary this year

Originally released in 2013, The Last Match centers on an intense love affair between two seemingly straight young men.

Reiner and Yosvani are best friends and soccer mates. Handsome Reinier, in order to support his mother, his wife and their baby turns to sex work. Meanwhile, the shy Yosvani is reluctantly engaged to a girl and lives with her and her bombastic loan shark father.

After a furtive kiss at a nightclub, the two young men quickly fall hard for one another. And as their love intensifies, the challenge is not with them but with their unforgiving Havana neighborhood… a place from which they desperately want to escape.

The two leads are charismatic and unforgettable as the super-charged lovers in this powerful drama from director Antonio Hens.

Celebrating it’s 10-year anniversary this year, The Last Match is now available on Dekkoo.

A family struggles with coming out in this heartwarming comedy-drama set in 1973 Cape Cod

Set in 1973, Wild About Harry follows Harry Goodhart (Tate Donovan), a British widower who relocates to Cape Cod with his two teen daughters to start a new furniture business. As daughters Madeline and Daisy (Danielle Savre and Skye McCole Bartusiak) adjust to their new lives, Harry struggles to withhold a deep secret – his new business partner, Theodore (Adam Pascal), is more than just that.

Trying to fit in with the cool kids at school, the girls sneak into a nearby gay club. There, Madeline discovers the truth about her father. The secrets that each keep slowly threaten to tear the family apart – especially when word gets out about the new family in town.

Set during a time when American society was redefining its national identity as well as its personal views, Wild About Harry perfectly captures the look and the language of the period in which it’s set. Alternately funny and heartbreaking, the film tells a parallel love story, richly painted on a canvas of small town suspicion, traditional family values and the rapidly changing sexual identity of America in an era of unrest and progressive change.

Watch the trailer for Wild About Harry below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

Ira Sachs’ emotional gay relationship drama Keep the Lights On comes to Dekkoo

The critically-acclaimed 2012 relationship drama Keep the Lights On chronicles the emotionally and sexually charged journey of two men in New York City through love, friendship and addiction.

Documentary filmmaker Erik (Thure Lindhardt) and closeted lawyer Paul (Zachary Booth) meet through a casual encounter, but soon find a deeper connection and become a couple.

Individually and together, they are risk takers – compulsive, and fueled by drugs and sex. In an almost decade-long relationship defined by highs, lows, and dysfunctional patterns, Erik struggles to negotiate his own boundaries and dignity while being true to himself.

The film’s fearlessly personal screenplay, written by director Ira Sachs (The Delta, Love is Strange, Little Men, Frankie) is anchored by Lindhardt, who embodies Erik’s isolation and vulnerability with a gentle presence. Harrowing and romantic, visceral and layered, Keep the Lights On is a film that looks at love and all of its manifestations, taking it to dark depths and bringing it back to a place of grace.

Watch the trailer for Keep the Lights On below. The film is available now on Dekkoo.

Stream the entire Where the Bears Are collection on Dekkoo!

Where the Bears Are is much-beloved, seven-season comedy-mystery series from creators, writers and stars Rick Copp, Ben Zook and Joe Dietl.

Described by the creators as a cross between ‘The Golden Girls’ and ‘Murder, She Wrote’, the series focuses on Nelson (Zook), Wood (Dietl) and Reggie (Copp), three gay, bear friends sharing a house in the Silver Lake neighborhood who, in each season, are drawn into a different murder investigation which plays out as a season-long story arc.

All seven seasons of Where the Bears Are are available to stream now on Dekkoo! Watch the trailer below and click here to browse through the full collection.

Short Film Spotlight: Sparrow

Written and directed by Welby Ings, Sparrow is a visually inventive 15-minute short film from New Zealand which follows an unusual young boy who believes he can fly.

Adorned with a set of homemade wings, he finds himself a frequent target of bullying at school. When he discovers the truth behind a family myth involving his war veteran grandfather, he finally discovers the strength to stand up to his abusers.

Visually stunning and deeply moving, Sparrow earned acclaim and awards at countless film festivals all around the globe when it was originally released in 2016.

Welby Ings recently made his feature-length debut with a boxing drama called Punch, which has also been earning a great deal of buzz at festivals over the past year and is expected to be released in the US in 2023.

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

Alan Cumming and Garrett Dillahunt star in the emotional period piece Any Day Now

From writer-director Travis Fine, Any Day Now is a fact-based drama starring Alan Cumming and Garrett Dillahunt. Set in the late-1970s, the film follows a gay couple who take in a child with down syndrome, played by Isaac Levya.

Once their new living arrangement is discovered by the local authorities, the men find that they must fight their way through an unjust and incredibly discriminatory legal system to adopt the child they have come to love as their own.

A deeply moving drama which takes a look at a difficult time in history, Any Day Now earned rave reviews from critics and won audience awards at over ten film festivals when it first made the rounds in 2012, including Tribeca where it premiered. Alan Cumming was also given Best Actor awards from Outfest, Seattle, Key West and Napa Valley film festivals.

Watch the trailer for Any Day Now below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.