Category: Pride

A man attempts a turbulent journey out of the closet in the moving drama ‘El Houb (The Love)’

Having spent decades hiding his sexuality from his family, Moroccan-Dutch businessman Karim (Fahd Larhzaoui) decides to come clean after his father catches him in bed with a man.

Caught up in a panic over the thought of coming out to his traditional Muslim parents (Slimane Dazi and Lubna Azabal), he barricades himself in their closet… literally.

As he feverishly revisits his childhood memories, negotiates a budding romance with a new Ghanaian boyfriend (Emmanuel Boafo) and wages a long-delayed battle royale to uproot his family’s conservative attitudes, a series of darkly hilarious and unflinchingly frank conversations begin – and the family is finally forced to confront the truths that have so long been avoided.

Loosely based on the theater work and actual experiences of lead actor and co-screenwriter Fahd Larhzaoui, El Houb (The Love) cascades through time. Director Shariff Nasr manages to straddle a line between uproarious comedy and heartbreaking drama while examining family dynamics, cultural taboos and hard-won self-acceptance.

Watch the trailer for El Houb (The Love) below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

‘Every Act of Life’ celebrates the career and friendships of legendary playwright Terrence McNally

Through six groundbreaking decades in the theatre, four-time Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally became a living legend, both on stage and off.

He launched the careers of some of Broadway’s biggest stars, was a pioneer in the fight for LGBTQ rights, triumphed over addiction, found love and inspiration at every age and continually showed the power of art to transform society.

Featuring interviews with Nathan Lane, Patrick Wilson, Edie Falco, Rita Moreno, Christine Baranski, F. Murray Abraham, Bryan Cranston and many more, Every Act of Life is an intimate and illuminating documentary that celebrates McNally’s life and relationships while examining his incredible legacy of work.

Watch the trailer for Every Act of Life below. The documentary is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Survivors speak out in director David France’s riveting documentary ‘Welcome to Chechnya’

With searing urgency and uncommon bravery, the eye-opening documentary Welcome to Chechnya shadows a group of activists who risk unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ purge raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic.

Since 2017, Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has waged a depraved operation to “cleanse the blood” of LGBTQ Chechens, overseeing a campaign to detain, torture and execute them. Operating without the sanction of the Kremlin, activists take matters into their own hands.

In this riveting and deeply affecting piece of work, David France, the acclaimed, award-winning director behind How to Survive a Plague, uses a remarkable hands-on approach to expose this atrocity and tell the story of an extraordinary group of people literally putting their lives on the line to confront evil and make not just Chechnya, but the whole world a better place for the LGBTQ community.

Watch the trailer for Welcome to Chechnya below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: The Station In-Between

Swiss actors Peter Fischli and Carlos Leal star in the tender and visually lush short film The Station In-Between as Theo and Louis, two gay men with little in common who are compelled to go on an emotional journey together.

Louis’s husband, who was also Theo’s best friend, was recently killed during a homophobic attack. The pair are traveling by train to Paxmal, a spiritual peace monument in the Swiss Alps, to scatter their beloved friend and partner’s ashes.

Along the way, almost as if by fate, they meet a variety of memorable characters. Some confront them with traumas of the past, while others remind them of the good things in life and the beauty that surrounds them even in the darkest of times.

Gorgeously crafted by director Sven Schnyder, this touching and compassionate 19-minute short film is an ode to unexpected friendships, as well as life, death and everything in between.

Check out the poster for The Station In-Between below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

The 1974 gay classic ‘A Very Natural Thing’ is now available on Dekkoo

Originally released by New Line Cinema in 1974, director Christopher Larkin’s A Very Natural Thing is considered one of the first films about gay relationships intended for mainstream, commercial distribution.

The plot concerns a young monk named David, played by Robert Joel, who leaves the monastery to become a public school teacher by day, while looking for true love in a gay bar by night.

Though it didn’t reach the large, mainstream audience the distributors had been seeking, the film offers a unique look at a specific period in the LGBTQ history – beginning with a mini-documentary about New York City’s 1973 Gay Pride Parade and continuing on to take a refreshingly positive and optimistic look at then-modern same-sex relationships.

While earlier queer films were dominated by tales of gays and lesbians being outcasts of society, mentally disturbed or committing suicide – and later queer films were sadly dominated by the emergence of the AIDS crisis – A Very Natural Thing represents a short period in time where gay liberation flourished, and filmmakers could explore relationships in much the same way that films with heterosexual characters did.

Check out the original poster for A Very Natural Thing below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: Affection

A thought-provoking 6-minute short from writer-director Connor Williams, Affection stars Justin Kang and Spencer Claus as Shawn and Luke, two young boyfriends who are unexpectedly confronted with their differences during a night out.

While walking down the street holding hands, a passing stranger makes a derogatory comment. The more confident, outspoken Luke’s response is to confront the situation head on – standing up for both himself and the man he loves. Shawn, however, has a different way or handling these incidents… though he’s seemingly reluctant to examine the reasons why.

Smart and compassionate where it counts, featuring terrific performances from the two lead actors, Affection examines the ways in which we deal with prejudice and what it says about our own levels of self-acceptance.

Check out the poster for Affection below. The short film is now available on Dekkoo.

Coming out gets more complicated than usual in the charming Italian rom-com ‘Tell No One’

Fast-paced, funny and even a little tear-inducing when it counts, Tell No One is a charming family comedy about successful young man who is long overdue to start telling the truth.

Mattia (Josafat Vagni) is about to move from Rome to Madrid to start a new job and marry his long-distance boyfriend Eduard (Jose Dammert). This will solve two problems: 1) He will be much closer to the man he loves; 2) He won’t have to bite the bullet and finally come out to his family.

His plan hits a major snag, however, when Eduard, having no idea that Mattia is still in the closet, announces that he has planned a surprise trip to Rome so that he can meet his boyfriend’s folks and ask for their son’s hand in marriage.

Stunned by this unexpected news, Mattia has to compose himself quickly and decide whether or not it’s time to tell the truth to his old-fashioned Italian parents.

Though the whole film takes place during one fateful day, director Ivan Silvestrini and screenwriter Roberto Proia use narration and a variety of creative visual flourishes to jump around in time and give the audience the full scope of Mattia’s family life.

Blending clever dialog and comic set-pieces with heartfelt moments of emotional poignancy, Tell No One should resonate for anyone who has spent a little too much time in the closet.

Watch the trailer for Tell No One below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

A closeted young Jewish man explores his sexuality in this thoughtful drama set in 1980s Brooklyn

A closeted young man struggles to reconcile his strict Russian-Jewish upbringing with his burgeoning sexuality in director Eric Steel’s Minyan, a contemplative coming-of-age drama set in Brighton Beach during the 1980s.

Samuel H. Levine stars as David, a Yeshiva student who dutifully follows religious strictures, but itches to explore yearnings beyond his insular community.

When he moves in with his widowed grandfather, played by Ron Rifkin, and befriends two elderly gay neighbors, they open his imagination to new possibilities.

David begins to explore gay life in the East Village, just as the threat of AIDS looms in the background.

A sexy and thoughtful critically-acclaimed drama, Minyan is a must-see, telling a powerful story of rebellion, self-discovery, sexual and spiritual awakening – and survival.

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

Short Film Spotlight: Two Words

British actors Henry Goodman and Sophia Myles deliver deeply emotional performances in the short drama Two Words.

The film follows Gavin (Goodman), a man in his mid-60s who is determined to finally be true to himself.

In order to do so, Gavin must reveal to his adult daughter (Myles) that he had been living a lie, concealing his sexuality throughout his 35 years of marriage.

From screenwriter David Blacker and director Jesper Emborg, Two Words tells a heartbreaking story of family, grief and self-realization.

Watch a short clip/trailer for Two Words below. The full 23-minute short film is now available on Dekkoo.

A seemingly straight guy comes to terms with his sexuality in the indie drama ‘That is All’

From writer-director Mark Weeden, That is All is an understated indie drama about a man trying to come to terms with the reality of who he is.

Sharing an apartment with his laidback roommate Paul (Daniel Bossenberry) and working a dull job that barely passes the time, Ryan, played by Joel Ballanger in a thoughtful and nuanced lead performance, finds himself consumed by loneliness as he enters his thirties.

What those around him don’t know is that Ryan is secretly struggling with his sexuality and finding comfort in online encounters with men.

At a birthday party for his friend Brad (Dan Tait Brown), Ryan meets Brad’s boyfriend Sam (Al Braatz) and the two hit it off. Ryan and Brad quickly become close and embark on an affair. At the same time, however, Ryan is stringing along Maya (Sara Hinding), a girl that has a crush on him.

Can Ryan come clean to himself and his friends about his sexuality? And, if so, can he do it without hurting anyone else in the process?

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