Title – ‘Kuntergrau‘
Director – Kai Kreuser, Maik Scholz, Nick Schröder
Starring – Fabian Freistühler, Daniel Kosic, Marcel Meyer, Moustafa Tarraf
Release Date – 2015
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Happy new year everyone!! Hope you all had at least some chance to rest, relax, and reflect on the coming year and all the exciting (and dreadful) surprises that lie in wait. Here’s to hoping you also got the chance to watch some movies to ring in the new year. Did any of you watch ‘Make the Yuletide Gay‘ with friends and/or family? I showed it to my mom and she was quite tickled by it!
I know the wait for Season 2 of ‘I’m Fine’ has felt like forever, but it’s nearly over!! It premiers January 25th right here exclusively on Dekkoo and you can check out a little teaser here! The full trailer is coming out veryyyy soon! In the meantime we’ve got something very similar for you – a webseries from the capital of Germany – Cologne dubbed ‘Kuntergrau‘. At 5 episodes averaging 12 minutes each you’ll be either binge it in one sitting or give yourself 5 fantastic morning commutes or work lunches worth of cute young queerness!
Being gay and living in Cologne in Germany and not Berlin must feel just like living in Pittsburgh versus NYC. But that’s where ‘Queer as Folk’ succeeded and that’s how ‘Kuntergrau‘ works its charm. There’s definitely something about portrayals gay life in a smaller city that seems more tight-knit and adventurous. It’s also this exact need to come together that inspired the production of the series. Volunteers aged 17-27 worked on this project over the course of several months and you can tell that a lot of love and hard work went into it.
‘Kuntergrau‘ follows five friends living as openly gay men in Cologne. It absolutely tries to do away with the typical coming-of-age closeted stereotypical storylines and instead tries to focus on issues that young gay men are living with in metropolitan areas. All the characters are very charming and unique in their own way, not to mention very cute! Jan and Noah are the first of the friends we meet and they also happen to be lovers. Complicating their relationship is Noah’s desire to be extremely masochistic and submissive in bed which cuddle-friendly Jan doesn’t enjoy. The handsome Marcel seems to tie a lot of the characters together with his openness towards sexuality and the fact that he’s the only single one. The final couple of the 5-some is the extremely cute and shy Leopold and a fresh face in Cologne; Lukas. There aren’t many supporting characters, but Leopold’s Grandma Margarethe is adorable!!!
It’s hard to pack a lot of content into something so short, but ‘Kuntergrau‘ absolutely has a lot to say. There’s a lot of emotional digging around the issue of sexuality in Jan and Noah’s relationship – is it truly love if one person’s sexual desires can’t be fulfilled? Lukas and Leopold have their own baggage to unpack – Leopold is very virginal/shy and Lukas is hooking up with someone outside of the relationship. Finally the show even tackles HIV with Marcel as a proud HIV-positive man simply trying to not let the virus take over his carefree and hookup-friendly life. The show really took me by surprise as I hadn’t heard of it, but I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this team as I think there’s some fantastic talent both in front of and behind the camera.
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Watch it with: A few friends
Mix it with: Vodka/Soda
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Discover great gay stories. 