Category: Award Winner

The relationship between a biographer and his subject spirals into abuse and dependence in the tense Australian drama Acute Misfortune

Erik Jensen was an ambitious nineteen-year-old journalist at The Sydney Morning Herald when Archibald Prize-Winning painter, Adam Cullen, with a career retrospective at the Art Gallery of NSW, invited him to write his biography. The new film Acute Misfortune follows of the four-and-a-half years leading to Cullen’s death at the age of forty-six. It is the story of their increasingly claustrophobic relationship.

Based on the award-winning biography Cullen, the Jensen did eventually publish, co-writer-director Thomas M. Wright’s film is about biographer and subject, an iconic artist and lauded author, theft and the commerce of theft, the instability of lies and of coming through an abusive relationship to find meaning in its wake.

These true events, told using almost entirely real dialogue are brought to life by award-winning actors Daniel Henshall (The Snowtown Murders, The Babadook), and Toby Wallace (Romper Stomper, The Turning). Acute Misfortune marks the feature-length debut of Wright, an actor known for Sweet Country and Top of the Lake.

Meticulously researched, the film that was named one of the best films of the year in The Monthly Awards in Australia and by Screen Daily. It also received The Age Critics Prize at Melbourne International Film Festival.

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

Get Back on Board with Greg Louganis

Back on Board: Greg Louganis is an intimate portrait of the public triumphs and private struggles of trailblazing openly gay athlete Greg Louganis. A refreshingly candid documentary about this four-time Olympic champion, Back on Board follows Louganis for three years as he struggles with financial security and reunites with the sport he once dominated but did not feel welcome in. The threat of losing his house during the recent financial crisis forces Louganis to re-evaluate the choices, relationships, and missed opportunities of his career.

Nominated for an Emmy Award and a Producer’s Guild of America award in 2016. Back on Board: Greg Louganis gained critical and audience acclaim on the film festival circuit, screening at over 40 festivals worldwide and picking up eight awards.

The film was also selected for the American Film Showcase, a program of the U.S. State Department that brings award-winning contemporary American documentaries around the world offering a view of American society and culture as seen by independent filmmakers.

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

No Hard Feelings is a must-see new romance!

The critically-acclaimed, Teddy Award-winning must-see romance No Hard Feelings tells a story about re-discovering one’s past and building a future together.

Parvis (Benny Radjaipour), the son of exiled Iranians, copes with life in his small hometown by indulging himself with pop culture, Grindr dates, and raves. After being caught shoplifting, he is sentenced to community service at a refugee shelter where he meets siblings Banafshe (Banafshe Hourmazdi) and Amon (Eidin Jalali), who have fled Iran.

As a romantic attraction between Parvis and Amon grows, the fragile relationship between the three is put to a test. They find and lose each other throughout a summer of fleeting youth, an intense first love, an attempt at a joint future, as well as the stark realisation that, in Germany, they are not equal.

Growing up in Cologne the son of exiled Iranis himself, writer-director Faraz Shariat studied media art to explore his experiences as a gay, second generation migrant. In his work, Faraz often attempts to re-inhabit his own history and build a visual archive of migration in Germany. No Hard Feelings is one of his most treasured works yet.

Watch the trailer for No Hard Feelings below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

The must-see relationship drama Keep the Lights On comes to Dekkoo

The critically-acclaimed 2012 relationship drama Keep the Lights On chronicles an 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.

Short Film Spotlight: Black Hat

At first blush, Shmuel (Adam Silver) is a pious Hasidic man leading a fairly simple life. By day he dutifully prays at the local synagogue and manages a busy dry cleaner. But when his wife and daughters leave town for a few days, Shmuel will step out of his simple daily life and into a more complex world lit by the night. When he misplaces his black hat along the way, Shmuel’s two lives will interconnect in a way he never expected.

The 15-minute short drama Black Hat follows twenty-four hours in the life of one Hasidic man that must wrestle with his own repressed identity. Through Shmuel’s story, writer Phillip Guttmann and director Sarah Smith raise the notion that these often mysterious and misunderstood religious individuals, typically only seen by the outside world on streets covered by hats and sheitels, are perhaps more complex – more like us – than we previously imagined.

Black Hat is “a story about loneliness and the feeling of being trapped between two worlds,” said director Smith. “Ultimately, this is a character study of a man searching for his place in the world, and our artistic approach will aim to support this main theme.”

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

Max Ryder and Jake Bass invite you on an intimate and revealing Road Strip

Coming off their stellar performances as bitter rivals in the award-winning and groundbreaking adult film Project Gogo Boy, Max Ryder and Jake Bass set upon a journey of self-discovery that tests their friendship and their resolve. Heralded as the “(F**k) Buddy Movie of the Year,” Road Strip is an intense journey into the real lives of two of the most popular young performers in the gay adult entertainment industry!

Road Strip follows Max and Jake as they travel from New York to Palm Springs in a rented RV. We soon see what happens when cameras are on them 24/7 and the line between reality and fantasy becomes increasingly blurred. It also heralds an entirely new genre in gay filmmaking.

Having just launched their careers, the two adorable subjects took the gay adult world by storm, racking up a mountain of awards and instantly catapulting both models and studio to the forefront of the industry. This time you’ll get to witness their interpersonal relationships flowering and unraveling, highly personal interviews, and one of the most revealing – and sidesplitting – desert “trips” ever taken.

Road Strip writer/director Jake Jaxson, along with his partners-in-business-and-in-life Benny Morecock, and R.J. Sebastian have creatively fused a behind-the-scenes look at the gay porn world with experimental art, cinema verite and raunchy reality TV and have managed to fashion one seriously visually arresting experience.

You can now stream Road Strip on Dekkoo today!

Don’t miss the acclaimed, decades-spanning French miniseries Proud

In 1981, it was still illegal to be gay in France. Today, same-sex marriage is recognized and has paved the way for legalizing the adoption of children by LGBTQ families.

With stories set in 1981, 1999 and 2013, the epic, critically-acclaimed three-part French miniseries Proud tells the story of Charles (Frédéric Pierrot), Victor (Samuel Theis) and Diego (Julien Lopez), three generations of people from the same family who represent the seismic social changes that took place in just three decades.

Created by Philippe Faucon, the award-winning director of Fatima (the 2016 Cesar winner for Best Film), this episodic cinematic event is a chronology of tolerance and a portrait of one family through changing times.

Watch the trailer for Proud below. All three episodes are available now on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: His Hands

Written, directed and created by actor Arron Blake and cinematographer Darius Shu, the visionary and visually immersive new psychological thriller His Hands is now available on Dekkoo to satisfy your Halloween viewing needs.

A silent film about two men of different ages (newcomer Philip Brisebois and director Arron Blake himself) meeting for the strangest encounter of their lives, His Hands earned major critical acclaim when it screened at the Tribecca Film Festival.

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

The critically-acclaimed drama Tremors is now available on Dekkoo

In this deeply personal follow-up to his landmark debut film Ixcanul, writer-director Jayro Bustamante shifts his focus from rural Guatemala to the denizens of Guatemala City, but once again sets his sights on an individual caught between two seeming irreconcilable worlds.

When handsome and charismatic Pablo (Juan Pablo Olyslager) arrives at his affluent family’s house, everyone is eagerly awaiting the return of their beloved son, devoted father and caring husband. A seemingly exemplary pillar of Guatemala City’s Evangelical Christian community, Pablo’s announcement that he intends to leave his wife for another man sends shock waves through the family.

As Pablo tries to acclimate to his new life in the city’s gay subculture with the liberated Francisco (Mauricio Armas Zebadúa), his ultra-religious family does everything in its power to get their prodigal son back on track, no matter the cost.

A sensation on the international film festival circuit, Tremors has received great critical acclaim. “Tremors is a prodigiously gut-wrenching demand for change; the film isn’t kindly asking for tolerance but bluntly exposing the torment inflicted in the name of a prejudiced God,” said Carlos Aguilar in The Wrap. “It’s a magnificently unflinching film from a master director in the making, whose thunderous strength will surely make waves in Bustamante’s Central American homeland and abroad.”

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

Now Available: Bridegroom

Released originally in 2013, the emotional documentary Bridegroom follows the journey of Shane Bitney Crone and Tom Bridegroom, two young men in a loving and committed relationship – a relationship that was cut tragically short by a misstep off the side of a roof.

The story of what happened after this accidental death, before marriage equality, tells of how people without the legal protections of marriage found themselves completely shut out and ostracized. The film is poignant, enraging and opened a window onto the issue of marriage equality like no speech or lecture ever could.

On May 7, 2012, the anniversary of Tom’s death, Shane made a video tribute to his greatest love entitled “It Could Happen To You.” This film, posted on YouTube, earned over 2.7 million hits and inspired over 50 thousand e-mails and comments on YouTube and Facebook. The impact of Shane’s original film, and the raw nerve it touched, told an important story that needed to be brought to the world stage.

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