Category: Short Film

Short Film Spotlight: According to Mateo

Exploring a particularly dark side of desire, the new 20-minute short film According to Mateo offers up a moody exploration of the grey area between pleasure and pain.

Mateo and his boyfriend, Marc, arrive home after a night out with Luke, a guy they’ve just met. After an argument, Mateo leaves their apartment and bumps into a mysterious drug dealer named Jon. Mateo convinces Jon to take him to his house – where he discovers that he can’t feel anything that isn’t pain.

Edgy and sexually-explicit, the film was produced and co-directed by Osama Chami, a former production assistant who gained a wealth of movie-making experience working on the films of Pedro Almodovar.

According to Mateo marks Chami’s directorial debut, along with his filmmaking partner Enrique Gimeno Pedros. You can also find their follow-up short, Young Diego, on Dekkoo later this month.

Watch the trailer for According to Mateo below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: The Future

The new 10-minute short The Future concerns a promising first date that could easily turn into a dream come true… or a nightmare.

Newcomer Chun-Wei Peng stars as a hopeless romantic who decides to venture out to the club and meet up with a guy he’s been chatting with on a dating app. When he meets the man, played by Elliot Cable, in person, there is an instant attraction.

The two young bachelors end up making out on the dance floor and share a cigarette on the way home. Soon, however, they’re approached on the street by a mysterious psychic played by Grace Carmen-Davis, who offers the new couple a free reading of their future. And that’s when things start to get really tricky.

Stylishly crafted by first-time director Andy I-Chang Wang, this trippy British short captures the infectious process of becoming smitten with someone you just don’t know all that well yet – and projecting a future together that, sadly, may not come to pass.

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

Short Film Spotlight: Wilma

Wilma tells the story of an unusual meeting between an estranged father and his precocious child.

Wilma is a young kid who goes to meet her dad for the very first time at the trailer park where he lives. What the dad doesn’t know, however, is that the son he once fathered now identifies as a girl and has changed her name.

A touching and funny 11-minute short film from Icelandic writer-director Haukur Bjorgvinsson, an accomplished artist who has worked mostly as a sound designer in commercials and music videos, Wilma earned massive acclaim at film festivals all around the world.

The film won the Special Jury Prize at the 2020 Flickerfest in Sydney, the Audience Award at the 2019 Luststeifen Film Festival and the Best Original Screenplay Award at the 2019 Face á Face Festival in France. It was also nominated for Best Short Film at the Icelandic Film and Television Awards. In fact, this short film has been so successful that Bjorgvinsson is currently working on a feature-length adaptation.

Wilma is available now on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: Malik

A hard-hitting 15-minute short film from French writer-director Nathan Carli, Malik concerns two men who are looking to make a better life for themselves, but find that escape is more difficult than either of them had hoped.

Malik and his boyfriend live in a low-income neighborhood that is less than accommodating to their lifestyle. The local homophobic attitudes have made their day-to-day lives unsafe.

They have formed a plan and attempt to flee the city, but Malik’s older brother Walid and his gang refuse to let them get away easily. What begins as an attempt to escape to greener pastures soon becomes a desperate run for their lives.

An intense drama, Malik has earned acclaim at film festivals and is now available to Dekkoo subscribers.

Short Film Spotlight: The Act

The Act is a stylish new 18-minute short from Thomas Hescott, a veteran director of the long-running British soap opera “EastEnders.”

The film follows the story of a young gay man named Matthews, played by Samuel Barnett, who believes that love is not, and cannot ever be, for him. That is, until he encounters the alluring Jimmy, played by Simon Lennon.

Set in 1965, just as acts of male homosexuality were about to be decriminalized in the UK, Matthews goes on quite a journey, discovering love, sex and a whole new chosen family in the backstreets and underground bars of Soho.

Speaking about The Act, Thomas Hescott said that the initial premise for the film was simple. Growing up, he never saw queer characters properly portrayed in period dramas. This new film is his attempt to tell a classic Hollywood love story with two gay men – a period drama wherein the characters that usually remain hidden start to emerge from the shadows.

The Act creates a world that juxtaposes the rigid conformity of mid-60s British society with the color and energy of an underground world and the intimacy and immediacy of a passionate relationship that would have been considered illicit at the time. The film also uses language taken directly from the 1965 House of Commons debates to frame the central love story.

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

Enjoy three unique short films from up-and-coming Spanish director Manu Roma

Manu Roma is an up-and-coming filmmaker from Barcelona who uses his work to tell personal queer stories. To give you a strong sense of his burgeoning talent, we have collected his first three short films, all made over the past three years.

First up is Bones, a 9-minute film about Victor, a 20-year-old with two immediate goals: to lose his virginity and, more dangerously, lose as much weight as possible before his 21st birthday.

Shot gorgeously in black and white, Roma’s next short, the 19-minute Anonymous, uses a first-person perspective to tell the stories of three men who go cruising for sex in different locations around Barcelona.

The final film, The Virgins, is a 13-minute slice of meta-fiction about the making of a short film. When the two stars of a new movie drop out at the last minute, the director and his boom operator find themselves taking over the lead roles and going to unexpected romantic lengths to tell their story.

A visionary filmmaker worth keeping your eye on, Dekkoo is proud to bring the work of Manu Roma to American audiences.

Bones, Anonymous and The Virgins are all available now on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: Jay

From Taiwanese director Szu-Wei Chen, Jay is a darkly funny and casually disturbing 14-minute drama that isn’t afraid to explore a particularly cringe-worthy taboo.

The film follows the titular character, a mysterious 13-year-old boy Jay, played by Nick Wang. Reaching a pivotal moment of sexual awakening, the teen finds himself suddenly fascinated by his toned and attractive older brother. Spying on him at every opportunity, including during a sexual encounter with a girlfriend, Jay’s curiosity morphs into an all-consuming obsession.

Playing out with very little dialog, the film gets its point across mostly through eerie suggestion. The story plays out mostly through visuals and emotions thanks to Wang’s lead performance – which, while somewhat stoic, conveys everything we need to know about this youngster’s misguided affections.

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