Category: International Film

A tragic incident alters the life of a young dancer in the powerful gay drama ‘Why Not You’

Thomas Prenn stars in the stirring drama Why Not You as Mario, a sensitive young dancer who finds difficulty in the day-to-day life of his small Italian village. At a local festival, he reunites with Lenz (Noah Saavedra), a former childhood friend who left town long ago.

Mario quickly becomes fixated on Lenz, who is now living out his dreams as an actor in Rome. Inspired, Mario decides to follow his friend to the Italian capital. When they meet in a gay bar, the night takes a tragic turn. Escaping unharmed, Mario’s life will be forever altered by the incident and the loss that follows.

The debut feature of writer-director Evi Romen, Why Not You is a challenging character drama, following a disoriented young man who senses that he must find a place for himself in an often violent and unforgiving world.

Watch the trailer for Why Not You below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: Utopia

Thomas and Julien, two boys from different social backgrounds, decide to meet in person after first connecting over the internet. Together, the pair embark on a dreamy adventure through the Parisian suburbs.

Lost among architectural projects, they begin an on-going conversation about the concept of utopia, and begin to nourish ideas about what their own personal utopia might look like.

Lead actors Pierre Elliott and Romain Poli deliver tender performances as two romantic young men who form a much-needed connection in this 22-minute short film from director Manfred Rott, originally released in 2012 to great acclaim at queer film festivals around the globe.

Gorgeously shot on 16 millimeter black and white film, Utopia is quietly moving and feels timeless in both vision and theme.

Watch a teaser trailer for Utopia below. The short film is now available on Dekkoo.

‘Block Pass’ is a sensitive, deeply felt and quietly profound queer motocross drama

A breathtaking drama that was shown during the Critics Week at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Queer Palm award, Block Pass, director Antoine Chevrollier’s first feature-length film, explores masculinity and sexuality in rural France.

Sayyid El Alami and Amaury Foucher star as Willy and Jojo, best friends who share a joint passion for motorcycles. Jojo is a skillful young driver who is well on his way to becoming famous in the local racing scene while Willy is there primarily for moral support, helping his closest friend to live his dream.

When Jojo’s secret desires are revealed, his fast track to fame begins to crumble. The two friends soon find themselves embarking on a rocky journey that neither of them wanted while navigating grief, toxic masculinity and unspoken desires along the way.

Sensitive, deeply felt, quietly profound and featuring impressively authentic performances from the young ensemble cast, Block Pass is a queer coming-of-age sports drama that establishes Antoine Chevrollier as a notable up-and-coming filmmaker.

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

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.