Category: International Film

Short Film Spotlight: One Day This Kid

As told by filmmaker Alexander Farah through a deftly composed array of small yet pivotal moments, the 17-minute short One Day This Kid follows a first-generation Afghan-Canadian man as he struggles to come to terms with being gay against the disapproval of his immigrant parents and takes steps toward establishing an identity of his own under his father’s shadow.

Inspired by the work of renowned artist David Wojnarowicz, the film uses gorgeous cinematography and emotional precision to tell the story of one gay boy growing up in a society that rejects him at all costs.

Delicate and poised, yet deeply powerful, this is the kind of heart-wrenching storytelling that should not be missed. Marking Farah as a filmmaker to watch, the film won the Narrative Short Competition at the 2025 South by Southwest Film Festival and has earned great acclaim at some of the world’s most prestigious cinema forums, including TIFF, the AFI Fest, Slamdance, Festival du Nouveau Cinema and many more.

Watch a teaser trailer for One Day This Kid below. The short film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Don’t miss the romantic, funny and incredibly sexy new Dekkoo Exclusive ‘Six Candies’

From Marcelo Briem Stamm, the prolific Argentine director behind Solo, We Are Thr3e and Sexual Tension: Volatile, Six Candies is a wildly sexy new gay film composed of various stories, mixed together and united around one self-help book that functions as a hedonistic manifesto.

Six Candies, the novel in question, asks the reader to create something of a bucket list of selfish gratification, choosing six specific pleasures per year that will take priority above all other day-to-day concerns.

The film follows a gay couple who are evaluating the rules of their potential open relationship, a photographer with low self-esteem who longs to return to their origins and two executives whose immense attraction to one another simply cannot be bound by the strict rules of the company that employs them.

Filmed in Buenos Aires with an incredibly hot cast, Six Candies is a colorful and charming erotic romp about following your instincts, seizing the moment and treating yourself to an exceptionally good time, regardless of the consequences.

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

‘Fashion Victims,’ a 2007 comedy crowd-pleaser from Germany, makes its debut on Dekkoo!

Wolfgang (Edgar Selge) is a middle-aged traveling ladies’ fashion salesman. Persnickety, humorless and self-absorbed, he’s alternately inattentive and insensitive toward wife Erika (Franziska Walser) and their teenage son Karsten (Florian Bartholomäi).

At the start of Fashion Victims, a 2007 comedy from German co-writer and director Ingo Rasper, Wolfgang finds himself in dire straits. His rival is threatening to steal his best customers and he’s also lost his driver’s license.

Desperate to stay one step ahead of his young enemy salesman, he cancels his son’s vacation plans and employs him as an unwilling chauffeur. Things soon go from bad to worse – the bank is after him, the taxman catches up with him, he’s on the outs with his wife, and, perhaps most surprisingly, his son announces that he’s gay… and has fallen in love with his father’s dreaded rival!

Both bullets and misunderstandings start flying once family and foe collide in this sexy screwball comedy.

Watch a short clip from Fashion Victims below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

An all-star cast brings Martin Sherman’s award-winning stage play ‘Bent’ to the screen

Clive Owen, Mick Jagger, Ian McKellen, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Paul Bettany star in Bent, a gut-wrenching adaptation of the award-winning stage play by Martin Sherman.

Originally released in 1997, the film is set in 1930s Berlin. We follow Max (Owen), a promiscuous gay man who sleeps with a German SA officer, only to see him killed by his fellow Nazis the next morning.

Refusing an offer of new papers for fear of leaving his boyfriend behind, he’s found by the Gestapo and soon bound for Dachau. Once there, Max makes friends with a fellow gay man, who shows him that dignity lies in acknowledging one’s true nature. As the pair become lovers through dialog and the power of their imagination, they reckon with identity and struggle to maintain their dignity in the face of unspeakable persecution.

The original play, which premiered in London in 1979 before opening on Broadway the following year, was revived many times, most significantly by Sean Mathias, who directed this film adaptation as well.

Though much time had passed between the play’s debut and this film’s release, much was still not known about the experiences of LGBTQ+ victims of the Nazi regime. By the time of the film’s release in 1997, it was the first feature to tackle the subject head on. Today, Bent remains a riveting and important record of our understanding of this terrible history, a valuable preservation of a significant work of theater and a deeply moving cinematic work in its own right.

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

Two young lovers discover Amsterdam’s queer nightlife in the stylish gay drama ‘Out’

A critically-acclaimed film festival hit from Dutch writer-director Dennis Alink, Out follows a pair of young lovers named Tom and Ajani. Together, the pair yearn for the moment when they can leave their small-minded, rural town in the Netherlands and be open about their relationship and identities.

When the pair move to Amsterdam to enroll in film school, they find themselves enmeshed in an explosive and relentless queer scene that challenges their ideas of who they are and what they want.

Dripping with sleek style and shot in sumptuous black and white, Out presents gay nightlife as a seductive creature that lures newcomers in and turns everything upside down, especially for those unaccustomed to a world that not only embraces you, but desires you.

A piercing portrait of being young and gay in a permissive environment, Out takes the audience on a simultaneously joyous and heartbreaking journey of self-discovery.

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

‘Rift’ is a haunting relationship thriller from Icelandic director Erlingur Thoroddsen

Months after they broke up, Gunnar (Björn Stefánsson) receives a strange phone call from his distraught ex-boyfriend, Einar (Sigurður Þór Óskarsson). He drives up to the secluded cabin where Einar is holed up and soon discovers that there’s more going on than he imagined.

As the two former lovers begin coming to terms with their broken relationship, some other person seems to be lurking outside the cabin, wanting to get in. In the most marvelous of Icelandic landscapes, the stage is set for a dense psychological thriller, where something strange and possibly sinister is growing from the ashes of a failed romance.

Packed with eerie atmosphere and captured with stunningly beautiful cinematography, Rift, a taut mystery from Icelandic writer-director Erlingur Thoroddsen, walks a fine line between thriller and relationship drama.

Chilling, thought-provoking, and deeply evocative, this is the kind of film that lingers with you long after the credits roll.

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

‘20,000 Species of Bees’ tells a heart-wrenching story about gender, sexuality and identity

In a small, sleepy village in the Basque Country, a sculptor named Ane and her three children arrive at her mother Lita’s home for summer vacation. Lita disapproves of her daughter’s frayed marriage, career as an artist and the way she parents her obstinate and mischievous children.

Chief among them is eight-year-old Aitor, nicknamed Coco, after it becomes clear that being referred to by the name Aitor elicits feelings of distress in the child. Born biologically male, neither birth name nor the genderless nickname feel quite right, and Ane’s concern for her child grows as Coco becomes more withdrawn.

The child’s only respite lies in the Basque hills, where Ane’s aunt Lourdes tends to the family’s beekeeping farm. Among the peaceful humming of bees and Lourdes’ open-minded guardianship, Coco slowly begins to confide in family and friends her discomfort in her body, eventually voicing a desire to be treated as a girl.

As Coco explores her own developing identity over the summer, Ane and the rest of her family in turn must learn to accept the child as she is.

From Basque director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, this assured debut feature is a wonderfully sensitive work carried by the Berlinale Silver Bear-winning lead performance of newcomer Sofía Otero.

An authentic and heart-wrenching story of transition, 20,000 Species of Bees is a landmark in the cinematic discussion of gender, sexuality and identity.

Watch the trailer for 20,000 Species of Bees below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: Impulses

Two very different individuals settle into one romantic unit in the sexy new short film Impulses, a visually striking work from Argentine filmmaker Juan Mirarchi.

Playing out like a dark tone poem, the film follows a writer named Joaquin, who, burdened by anxiety and self-doubt, struggles to embrace the romantic and emotional vulnerability that presents itself when he starts living with Gabriel, his seemingly perfect new boyfriend.

What, at first, seems like it may be a case of obsessive interpersonal attachment soon reveals itself as simple post-commitment jitters blown way out of proportion.

The actors bare both body and soul in this tender and thought-provoking short relationship drama.

Watch a short teaser for Impulses below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Mismatched roommates become unexpected allies in the sly British dramedy ‘Makeup’

When two people are brought together from completely different walks of life, it can make for awkward circumstances, especially when they both have their secrets.

Making his feature debut, writer-director Hugo Andre also stars in the film Makeup as Sacha, an introverted French food critic who travels to London. Moving into a rented room in a house belonging to Dan (Will Masheter), a well-respected stockbroker, they fall into a classic “Odd Couple” dynamic.

As time goes on, Dan attempts to hide his aspirations of becoming a burlesque dancer from those who perceive him as an alpha male. Despite their differences, Sacha and Dan soon become pillars of support in each other’s lives.

A winner of 15 different awards at film festivals around the globe – including ‘Directorial Debut by a Young Film Maker’ at the London International Film Festival – Makeup is a stirring drama about the unlikely friendship that forms between the hidden personalities of two distinct characters.

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

Short Film Spotlight: Many Happy Returns

André (Vitor Rocha) is about to turn twenty-five years old. Extremely worried about his future – and about the uncertainties of life in general – he’s not even able to celebrate.

At his birthday party, before blowing out the candles, he wishes for time to stop passing. To his great surprise, his wish comes true. The next morning – and over the next several – he finds that the day has repeated. It’s still, perhaps always, his twenty-fifth birthday once again.

Suddenly André finds that he has eternal youth, the absence of problems and the liberty to do just about anything he wants without the fear of consequences. When he learns, however, that time has stopped passing only for him, what seemed to be a dream come true morphs into a nightmare.

Now he must go back in time – one last time – and correct his past while learning how to enjoy the present without worrying too much about the future.

Taking obvious inspiration from Groundhog Day, Many Happy Returns is a clever short musical comedy about learning to appreciate the time you’re in – no matter how old you may be.

Watch the trailer for Many Happy Returns below. The short film is now available on Dekkoo.