In this unusual new film, controversial cult film director and legendary queer activist Rosa von Praunheim focuses his lens on a recent, true criminal case involving a German serial killer.
Lars (Bozidar Kocevski), a male nurse from Saarbrucken, moves with his lover Roland (Heiner Bomhard), a kind young musician with a lilting voice, to Berlin. The two lovers soon begin renovating an apartment with the intention of finally living together. For Roland, their happiness seems almost complete. What he doesn’t know, however, is that while secretly checking out Berlin’s nightlife, Lars is experimenting with a deadly poison – an obsession that will lead to a horrific outcome for the couple.
Using a psychiatric tribunal as a framing device, von Praunheim expertly balances Lars’ twisted fantasies with Roland’s dreams of a blissful romance.
Watch the trailer for Darkroom below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.
Sordid Lives creator Del Shores new filmed one-man show proves once again that he is not a writer, he’s a self-proclaimed thief. In Six Characters In Search Of A Play, Shores is inspired by Pirandello’s classic play to bring you six characters inspired by his real-life encounters that haven’t quite made it into one of Shores’ plays, films or TV shows.
In 90 minutes, he presents the audience with the truth behind how he collected these eccentrics, then he portrays them in classic Shores’ monologue style. The audience will walk away knowing “Yvonne”, the vegetarian-hating Texas waitress; “Sarah”, an elderly actress who is determined to drink and smoke herself to death if Trump is elected; “Jimmy Ray”, the evolving Georgia redneck, “Loraine”; the once brilliant drama teacher who has lost her damn mind and is now obsessed with porn; “Aunt Bobbie Sue”, the blue-collar Republican who does not care for “Mexkins” or Obama; and “Marsha”, the monkey-hating lesbian with CPOD.
Del Shores has written, directed and produced successfully across studio and independent film, network and cable television and regional and national touring theatre. His career took off with the play Daddy’s Dyin’ (Who’s Got The Will?) in 1987, which ran two years, winning many Los Angeles theatre awards, including LA Weekly’s Best Production and Best Writing. The play has subsequently been produced in over 2,500 theatres worldwide. A movie version was released in 1990 starring Beau Bridges, Tess Harper, Judge Reinhold, Keith Carradine and Beverly D’Angelo.
Sordid Lives, his fourth play, opened in Los Angeles in 1996 and ran 13 sold-out months. The play went on to win 14 Drama-Logue Theatre Awards, including three for Shores for wring, directing and producing. There have since been over 300 additional stage productions of the play. In 1999, Shores wrote and directed the film version of Sordid Lives starring Beau Bridges, Delta Burke, Olivia Newton-John, Bonnie Bedelia, Leslie Jordan and Beth Grant along with most of the cast from the play. Opening in only eight theaters across the country, the little film that could took in nearly two million dollars in its limited release and became a cult phenomenon.
Writer-director Andrew Ahn’s remarkably assured feature-length debut is a portrait of forbidden sexual awakening set in the nocturnal world of spas and karaoke bars in Los Angeles’ Koreatown.
David Cho (Joe Seo, who won the Special Jury Award at Sundance for his breakthrough performance), a timid 18-year-old living with his financially-struggling immigrant parents, chances upon a secret spot for cruising when he takes a part-time job at an allmale spa, and begins to realize hidden inner desires that threaten his life as a dutiful son and student.
Effervescent and atmospheric, this one-of-a-kind coming-of-age story makes the steamy spa a liminal place between dream and reality, and desire and disillusionment.
“Spa Night is an intensely personal film,” said Ahn. “I knew very early in the screenwriting process that I had to draw from my own life experiences in order to find the honesty I wanted to show on screen. As the son of Korean-American immigrants, I have felt the conflict between my parents’ expectations and my own personal desires. In Spa Night, I wanted to explore what it means to be a part of a Korean-American family. As Spa Night progressed into production, the film became even more personal for me. We shot on location in Koreatown, Los Angeles — at restaurants I have eaten at, spas I have visited, and streets I have walked down. As I directed scenes, I saw my family in this fictional family I had created.”
“My main character David speaks in a mix of Korean and English to his parents, the same mix I use when I speak to my parents. With Spa Night, I want to open up American independent cinema to include stories about immigrant communities told in languages other than English. It is important that our cinema culture reflect the diversity of the American experience. By telling this story, I am attempting to validate the immigrant experience and acknowledge my parents’ sacrifice to leave their home country and start a new life in America. Spa Night is my way of fulfilling my parents’ hopes and dreams.”
Watch the trailer for Spa Night below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.
A gay sauna is the meeting place for a ragtag group of strangers looking for anonymous sex and perhaps a friendly smile in this supremely human dramedy.
On any given day at Copa 181, tucked in a corner of the Copacabana neighborhood in Rio, expect to find Tana and his wife Eros, an opera singer who finds acceptance for her incredible gift at the bathhouse. Joining them are a host of men ready to pay for the muscle-bound escorts. These include Leo, who tried to keep his relationship with trans girlfriend Kika a secret. Kika, a housecleaner by day, entertains nightly from the tiny stage and dreams of an elusive stardom that is just out of reach.
Everyone at Copa 181 falls under the joint spell of the sex and escape from mundane reality the bathhouse offers and audiences, too, will fall under the seductive spell.
Watch the trailer for Copa 181 below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.
Jason and Ade (“Looking” star Russell Tovey and Arinze Kene) are nineteen. They’ve been in the academy of a famous London soccer club since they were eight, and now it’s the night before their first-ever game as professionals.
Though they should be sleeping, the boys find themselves over-excited. They exercise, fight, laugh, and talk. And then, suddenly, Jason kisses Ade. In the high-profile sporting world where image is everything, this surprising pass sets the men up for a contrasting decade of fame and failure, full of secrets, denial and sensual secret encounters.
Based on a stage play and featuring terrific performances, The Pass is a relentlessly sexy and deeply heartfelt examination of sports, friendship and homoerotic tension.
Watch the trailer for The Pass below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.
From writer-director Kevin James Thornton, the filmmaker behind the 2019 feature How to Get from Here to There, comes Stranger Hearts, a thoughtful, sexy and deeply heartfelt new Dekkoo Original Series following three queer characters of wildly different backgrounds.
First, there is Andre (newcomer Qua Robertson Harper), a shy young African-American man struggling with his sexual identity. When his mother finds a stack of gay porn hiding in his closet, the truth starts inching ever closer to the surface. Then there is Luka (Amo), a gender non-conforming photographer who has fallen on hard financial times. In need of a steady job, Luka decides to dip their toe into the potentially risky world of online escorting. Lastly, there is Billy (Matt Moran), a smooth-taking media mogul who finds his life turned upside down when he’s diagnosed with an incurable heart disease. While waiting for a transplant, he begins reevaluating his life and learning to appreciate the people closest to him.
Though they don’t know it, all three of these disparate characters are soon to be connected – through fate, work, family, love… and donuts.
Mark your calendars now. Stranger Hearts will be available exclusively on Dekkoo starting Thursday, March 12, 2020. Keep checking back here for more updates!
Enis and Philipp (Julien Lickert and Sascha Weingarten) are two hot macho dudes from Berlin who become workout buddies at their local gym – each spotting the other. The two hunks quickly fall into an intense friendship. When Philipp wins a trip to Greece, he invites Enis along and the two have a great time. But during a hike, they become lost and tempers flare, escalating to a violent scuffle.
A mysterious young man, Hercules (Henry Morales), happens upon them and leads them to a magical underground cave. During the night, fueled by forbidden fruit Hercules has warned them against eating, passion ignites between Enis and Philipp. The next day, nothing between the two will ever be the same.
Watch the trailer for Orpheus Song below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.
Beginning with a quote from Carl Sagan, writer-director Layke Anderson’s new short film Mankind is an intimate relationship drama with bigger themes on its mind.
Will and Evan (Ricky Nixon and Alexis Gregory) have been in a committed relationship. It all comes crumbling down however, when Evan sneaks his way into Will’s emails. He discovers that Will has entered and been selected for a potentially dangerous space mission aiming to test the possibilities of colonizing Mars. Not only does Even learn that Will might be leaving him, he learns that Will may be leaving the entire planet behind.
What plays out throughout the thirteen-minute runtime of this heady short is a simple conversation in which two men with vastly different opinions about life and the future try to find some kind of common ground. Anderson splices in shots of their love life, their sexual escapades and vast footage of the cosmos to contrast and expand on his themes. At different points throughout Mankind, Will and Evan could be talking about their relationship, or humanity in general.
Watch the trailer for Mankind below. The full short film is now available on Dekkoo.
In the crowd-pleasing new romantic drama From Zero to I Love You, Noah’s Arc and Boy Culture-star Darryl Stephens plays Pete, a gay man who has played the field for years, avoiding commitment by hooking up with exclusively with married men. Enter handsome model Jack (Scott Bailey of Guiding Light and Prayers for Bobby) who is fifteen years into a seemingly perfect marriage with an enviable wife and two kids.
When Jack and Pete hook up, both assume it’s going to be a one-time-only thing. But an overwhelming desire for a return tryst leads to more down-low action. Suddenly Pete begins to realize that in addition to the incredible sex, he is developing very strong feelings for this new married man. Is it possible that the commitment-phobic Pete and Jack, his supposedly straight lover who has a lot of baggage, will find a future together?
The off the charts chemistry between the two leads adds authenticity to this deeply satisfying obstacle-filled romance. Written and directed by Doug Spearman, the same filmmaker behind the hit 2013 gay action-comedy Hot Guys with Guns, From Zero to I Love You has been a massive hit at film festivals all around the globe.
When the secretly gay lead singer of the up-and-coming band “65 Home” is brutally murdered in a Chicago back alley, his friends and lovers travel back to Nashville with his ashes to honor him and examine why he was killed.
We follow the friends and lovers of ‘Handsome Jake’ (Grant Stokes) as they try to come to terms with the singer’s untimely death. As the band travels to Nashville to honor his passing, we discover that there are many Jake’s – the brother, the lover, the poet, the liar and the cruel manipulator.
Everyone knows a different side of this man and the conflicted and seemingly contradictory aspects of his life. Torn between his personal and professional relationship with his co-writer Mel (Erinn Strain) and their unborn child, committed to his affair with his secret lover John (Nathanael Card), determined to make it big at all costs – Jake is destined for greatness and taken from us all too soon. But by whom? And why?
As the band members cross the Midwest with Jake’s ashes on board their Winnebago, they must now struggle to regroup, understand what happened, and find a way to move on. But can they do it without Jake?
Watch the trailer for Fall Away below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.
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