The Magical Son (2022)

Boys on Film 22: Love to Love You

The latest in Peccadillo’s critically acclaimed series – now established as a leading showcase for new and emerging queefilm-makingng talent from around the world – features a fresh and exciting selection of the very best contemporary gay short films. Each self-contained drama in this diverse and thoughtfully curated collection offers fascinating and insightful new perspectives on the gay experience – sensual, affecting, sometimes provocative and always entertaining. The 8 short films are: Have We Met Before? (2019); The Act (2020); First Position. (2019); Winter [Invierno] (2021); The Suit Weareth the Man (2020); Infinite While It Lasts [Infinito Enquanto Dure] (2019); Melon Grab (2017); Thrive (2019).

Uncut

Circumcision and artistic freedom concern three homosexuals, denied communication during a surreal jail stay.

Philippino Story

Philip and Bastian are lovers. Philip has taken the responsibility to help his older brother’s family in the slums. However, when Bastian pursues painting and can no longer provide for Philip, Philip resorts to hustling in order to help his brother’s family. When Bastian catches Philip being picked up by a gay man in a car, he decides to keep everything inside. Can Philip and Bastian’s love prevail despite the odds?

The Surf Report

A ghostly love story unfolds as two men look for answers where ocean meets sky and city meets wild in Rockaway Beach, NY.

Mädchen in Uniform

A sensitive girl is sent to an all-girls boarding school and develops a romantic attachment to one of her teachers.

My Summer of Love

In the Yorkshire countryside, working-class tomboy Mona meets the exotic, pampered Tamsin. To seal their friendship, Mona introduces Tamsin to her born-again Christian brother and helps her spy on her adulterous father. Bound together by their secrets, the two girls see their friendship deepen and enter into dangerous waters.

Pretty Boy

Sean is taken to a motel and is given a prostitute for his 18th birthday by his father. He must sleep with her to "fix" his questionable homosexuality. "Pretty Boy" is a coming of age story of a young bullied teen, Sean, struggling with his sexuality and the hardships of high school. After his father finds some questionable magazines in his room, this devout Christian will go to any lengths to get his son to find the light and "perform" the way a man should. Sean is introduced to Katie, a prostitute that understands the stigmas of modern society and helps him see the true light that is within him.

Rift

Months after they broke up, Gunnar receives a strange phone call from his ex-boyfriend, Einar. He sounds distraught, like he's about to do something terrible to himself. Gunnar 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 men come to terms with their broken relationship, some other person seems to be lurking outside the cabin, wanting to get in.

The Euthanizer

A black comedy about a man struggling to make a living by helping people kill themselves.

Tropical Malady

The passionate relationship between two men with unusual consequences. The film is divided in two parts. The first half charts the modest attraction between two men in the sunny, relaxing countryside and the second half charts the confusion and terror of an unknown menace lurking deep within the jungle shadows.

Typhoon

An escaped convict on his way to Texas strikes a deal with a young misfit.

Nobody Loves Me

On the brink of her 30th birthday, Fanny feels the door to marital happiness closing on her. She is obsessed with death and even visits evening classes on dying, so it seems fitting that she encounters a skeleton in the malfunctioning elevator of her apartment building. The skeleton is her neighbour Orfeo, a Black, gay, self-declared psychic, who convinces her that she is about to meet "him". But is it really Lothar, the new yuppie apartment manager ...?

Spun

Over the course of three days Ross, a college dropout addicted to crystal-meth, encounters a variety of oddball folks - including a stripper named Nikki and her boyfriend, the local meth producer, The Cook - but all he really wants to do is hook up with his old girlfriend, Amy.

Oi! Warning

A young man gets caught up in a conflict between his friends, a skinhead and a gay anarchist.

Mi mamá se fue con las vacas

Elías is a boy who faces abandonment by his mother, but is willing to do everything to see her again.

The Bathhouse of Malatily

The film is an adaptation of the novel Samar Habib by Ismåeel Walieddin. author of Female Homosexuality in the Middle East: Histories and Representations. The main character, Ahmad, leaves rural eastern Egypt for the city hoping to become economically self-sufficient, gets an apartment for his parents, and obtains a law degree. He and his family are refugees from a town occupied by the Israeli army, Ismaåilia. Ali, the owner of the Malatily Bathhouse, offers to let him stay there for free. Ahmad encounters several characters there, including Naåeema, a prostitute who he becomes obsessed with, and Raouf, a homosexual man.

Gilles

On a Saturday night in the "City of Love", two sworn enemies are united in their hatred for someone they despise even more than each other: a gay man.

Children of History

After swimming class, two 12-year-old boys, Jules and Noam, chat and discover that their grandfathers fought in World War II. One, a German soldier; the other, a Jew.

Hold

Stuck in his endless loneliness, a man wanders in a post-apocalyptic world... Only to discover he is not alone.

Hormones and Other Demons

Eduarda (Eddi) wants to become a woman, but what makes a woman? Maybe breasts help? She goes on holiday with her family and meets Lukas. Unfortunately, she is not the only family member who wants to feel attractive. Are we really defined by what others see?

Clandestine

Every year, thousands of people coming from Africa try to reach Spain in desperate and dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean. Tariq is a young Moroccan who works for a mafia that organises these illegal journeys. His job is to carry immigrants in a dinghy across the strait and not getting caught. But every trip might be the last one.

World Wide Woven Bodies

At the end of the 1990s the Internet comes to Northern Norway and coincides with the sexual awakening of young Mads (12). The introduction of pornographic images into his life complicates his relationship with his parents, and their house becomes a minefield filled with uncomfortable interactions.

Room 048

Set in a single hotel room, this film traces its history from conception to decay through an intimate look at five of its occupants, all of whom the room once knew but have since been lost in time.

A Different War

Although Nuni has been selected to play the lead (King David) in his Jerusalem grade school play, he'd secretly rather play the princess role instead.

Son of Macho Dancer

This is the story of Inno, the son of Pol, the original Macho Dancer.

Bag of Worms

A Halloween party turns south when the issue of race comes up amongst friends.

La verbena

Alex, a young man about to become a father and struggling with the acceptance of his homosexuality, and his girlfriend Anna join their friends on a warm summer night in Barcelona for a lively night out. The unexpected arrival of Marc, an old friend of Alex's from London, brings with him revelations that challenge their relationships and detonate their secrets.

Circuit

The hunky John is a closeted small-town cop who moves to L.A., where he is quickly seduced into the gay life of workouts and dusk-to-dawn parties. With actual circuit party footage and mounds of glistening and chiseled flesh, the pulsating Circuit is bound to get your juices flowing.

Clément, Alex, and Everyone Else

Clement is gay. Alex is gay. They are looking for a new roommate for their big apartment in Paris with only one demand: he must be gay. And they find Leo, a charming student who is in deep trouble to find a place to sleep. Leo will do anything to get that room, whatever it takes.

Another Love Story

A dynamic young man falls in love with his own boss, a married businessman, with two children.

As Is

Story of a homosexual man who finds out he has AIDS and how people react. Ex-lovers are brought together when the former is stricken with AIDS. Often humorous and never morose, author William Hoffman doesn't pull his punches with either his portrayal of a gay lifestyle or of the emotional toll the disease takes.

12 Weeks

In a public mall bathroom, Lilly, François, and their 6-year-old daughter bid farefell to an unborn family member.

Love in the Big City

Free-spirit Jae-hee and closeted Heung-soo deeply connect over being misfits and begin living together. The pair ceaselessly rely on each other as they navigate the complexities of love and romance in the big city of Seoul.

Sins of the Cloth

Forbidden love stories where gay men navigate the intense conflict between their deep-seated religious beliefs and their passionate desires. The 7 short films are: A Particular Friend (2023); Venena Bibas (2016); Keeping Faith (2017); Give Up the Ghost (2020); Barely in Love [לאהוב בקושי] (2013); The Vigrant [연극하는 날] (2021); Longing [אישך, תשוקתך] (2014).

Body Electric

Elias is a handsome young deputy manager in a garment factory in São Paulo. When he’s not working, he enjoys casual encounters in the big city. The arrival of a young African, Fernando, on the production line piques his interest and Elias finds himself increasingly drawn into socialising with his work colleagues.

The Firefly

After her estranged brother's sudden death, young wife Lucia bonds with his fiancée through their shared grief and finds herself falling in love.

After-School Special

A man and a woman have an awkward encounter at an indoor playground.

Coming Out

Vincent rehearses with his boyfriend the difficult announcement he will make to his father.

The Wedding Banquet

A Taiwanese-American man is happily settled in New York with his American boyfriend. He plans a marriage of convenience to a Chinese woman in order to keep his parents off his back and to get the woman a green card. Chaos follows when his parents arrive in New York for the wedding.

The Last Rung on the Ladder

Larry is one of the most respected corporate lawyers in the country. You might say he has everything in life one could want - except everything that one needs. He shares his life with nobody and has saturated himself into his work to the point where it is his world. When his sister, Katrina, falls victim to circumstances of life, he is nowhere to be found. The Last Rung On The Ladder is a story about loss and regret.

The Last Rung on the Ladder

Larry discovers his estranged sister, Kitty, has committed suicide. He recounts a fateful day, when the two were children playing in their family’s barn in rural Nebraska.

The Pleasure Principle

In a financially troubled farm in the 1930's, its depraved owners become attracted to their new handsome and young handyman.

Revolution

A coming-of-age story about Jack, a 16-year old Iranian boy growing up in 1989 Los Angeles. With the 1979 Iranian Revolution a distant memory, the AIDS movement as a backdrop, and a haunting score by Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij, Jack learns how to stage his own much smaller revolution within the confines of his traditional family.

Frozen Roads

Balthazar and siblings Christian and Lyla have been friends since childhood. As the trio struggles with coming of age in a rural, conservative Canadian town, they must confront escalating desires for one another that threaten to destroy their delicate bond.

I'm Sorry, My Love

A solid middle American couple meet a stranger who will have a big role in history as we know it.

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer -- arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and co-designer). Enter Karin, a 23-year-old beauty who wants to be a model. Petra falls in love with Karin and invites her to move in.

Romper Stomper

Nazi skinheads in Melbourne take out their anger on local Vietnamese, who are seen as threatening racial purity. Finally the Vietnamese have had enough and confront the skinheads in an all-out confrontation, sending the skinheads running. A woman who is prone to epileptic seizures joins the skins' merry band, and helps them on their run from justice, but is her affliction also a sign of impurity?

Milk

The true story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man ever elected to public office. In San Francisco in the late 1970s, Harvey Milk becomes an activist for gay rights and inspires others to join him in his fight for equal rights that should be available to all Americans.

CAT

The ideal comfortability of a kitten is taken away by a man impersonating as such. Refusing to stop until the owner gives full surrender.