The Maiden Tower (2023)

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).

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.

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.

The Euthanizer

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

Bones and All

Abandoned by her father, a young woman embarks on a thousand-mile odyssey through the backroads of America where she meets a disenfranchised drifter. But despite their best efforts, all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and to a final stand that will determine whether their love can survive their otherness.

Typhoon

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

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.

Tooty's Wedding

A young couple's marriage hilariously hits the rocks during a weekend wedding in the country.

Fall for You

This movie tells the story of a pair of sisters who have been separated since childhood and meet as strangers many years later. After getting along day and night, their love gradually develops into a couple relationship, but at the end they find an unusual relationship with each other... Through this film, we want to explore where the moral bottom line of society is, especially when we touch on themes of gays and taboo love, and reflect on the right and wrong of these more extreme relationships. And the role of sister represents the public who feel that this relationship is "wrong" according to social ethics and moral standards. The younger sister represents the "selfish" self in the love relationship. After all, it is "beautiful" to be with the person you love the most and have each other. There is nothing wrong with loving each other. The only thing wrong is that they are sisters. (Google Translate)

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.

Because You're Mine

Torn by the farewell letter of his boyfriend, Samuel tries to change his ideas in nature. The forest will bring him a strange and sensual consolation…

Chang-ok's Letter

Housewife Eun-ha is busy every day: In addition to taking care of her husband who doesn’t help out at all and her willful daughter and son, she has to care for her nagging mother-in-law, who is nearly bedridden.

The Artificial Humors

Using a mix of Hollywood aesthetics with documentary strategies, the film follows a young indigenous girl from the Xingu National Park to São Paulo, where she falls in love with a robot that also happens to be a stand-up comedian. This strange story mixes the anthropology of humor, indigenous communities, and artificial intelligence.

Dreams Come True

Plot unavailable

The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands

A man afflicted with a curse while visiting Bombay, India at the turn of the 20th Century struggles to live life without ever touching another human being. His tragic lack of success in remaining free of all human contact causes the death of casual acquaintances and close friends alike. Ultimately, his curse turns back upon him and his story ends as tragically as those he affected with his curse.

A Search Through Nine Lifetimes

For love to travel for thousands of years, they will eventually meet.

The Fox Spirit Repays a Debt

A wife and a concubine seek freedom. In a game of seduction, together they join forces to defeat their oppressors.

Almost

Oscar jumps on his subway as every day. But at that morning a side-glance wipes every ritual away...Catherine! Two unknown whose glimpses are coming across in the following weeks. Oscar knows that he would not show the courage to come in contact with her all the more after an embarrassing mishap so he is casting for another way to give her a sign whose uniqueness he is hoping she will understand.

Fragile in Love

Fragile in Love is an experimental short that rebels against the suppression of electronic music culture and gay house parties.

Dead Man’s Hand

George Gregson's world is turned upside down when he meets a man in a 1940's gentleman's club who refuses to shake hands. Based on Stephen King's short story 'The Man who Would Not Shake Hands'.

Soulmate

Mi-so and Ha-eun meet in elementary school and quickly become best friends. In high school, Ha-eun meets Jin-woo and starts to have feelings for him, but he starts to have feelings for Mi-so. When they all meet again as adults, they are very different people, but they try to remember what friendship is really about.

She Was Here

Promotional short film for Lancia.

No Me Digas Wey

Plot unavailable

Answer

A seemingly innocent voicemail message left on a man’s answer machine by his ex, soon turns on its head when we learn of his dark past in their relationship. We quickly learn that our protagonist may not be as innocent as he seems, through the heart-wrenching monologue delivered to him via the tiny machine in his home.

Photo Op

A lonely Brooklyn photographer (Randy Harrison, "Queer as Folk") gets the courage to come out from behind his camera to capture his crush, but it turns out there is more to the picture than meets the eye.

The House of Loss

The elderly at the nursing home have their heads shaved. The protagonist who works there sees them but can't read their expressions. However, from one instance, he finds himself looking closely at their faces.

The Great Artist

A gifted artist finds himself in a broken balance between creating world class art and the all too silent struggle of self care as his life begins to unravel because of his Dissociative Identity Disorder.

The Fox Spirit and The Little Priest

She has waited 300 years for the other to be born again. Can their relationship find a new start when one is a fox spirit, and the other a priestess?

The Courtesan and the Female Scholar

Cross-dressed as a man, the young scholar did not anticipate catching the eye of a beautiful courtesan, nor the bond that they form together. But will her long-standing deception create a rift between the two of them?

The Caged Canary

Years of trying to fit in with the high society as the Gu family's foster daughter, Gu Shuyi meets headstrong & charming, Bai Yuwei. These two women grow fond of each other. With their new found trust and support, they try to break free from the constraints of patriarchy and embrace modernity.

The Woman in the Room

A lonely and exhausted young woman caring for her ill father must make a difficult decision as his health rapidly declines.

The Woman in the Room

Johnny is burdened with the desire to euthanize his terminally ill mother in order to relieve her.

Votum

Mary is slowly succumbing to dementia in a Sanatorium. She knows that her condition is irreversible and time is not on her side.

I Love Hooligans

A football hooligan feels unconditional love for his club. However, being gay, he has to hide his identity in order to survive in this world that is so precious to him.

Hello, Stranger

Arthur is a single dad, struggling with the care for his seven-year-old son Max and the combination of his secret life as a drag queen.

Naked

A message from Javier's boyfriend changes his family situation and causes them to reconsider their relationships.

Breaking the Silence

Francesca, tormented by her past, breaks the silence to talk about surviving the horrors of the comfort stations of Imperial Japan.

Cherry-Red

Anna and Marie are two women who could possibly love each other. Marie wants to be open to this new overwhelming feeling, even if she has to throw away all that she has ever held to be right. Anna on the other hand, enjoys the attention from this gentle soft girl Marie, who seems to love her, not in spite of but also because of her sharp edges. It could all be so easy if it weren't for Zoe, the woman who has been at Anna's side for years.

According to Mateo

Mateo and his boyfriend, Marc, arrive home after a night out with Luke, a guy they've just met. After an argument, Mateo leaves the flat and bumps into Jon, a drug dealer they have called. Mateo convinces Jon to take him to his house where he discovers he can't feel anything if it's not through pain.

Petit ami

Jasper, a 20 something playboy with little empathy, has a date in a rather obscure motel Petit Ami with Vincent, a mysterious older man. For Jasper just another day on the job, until he discovers Vincent's secret.

1st Kiss

After losing her husband to death following a troubled marriage, a woman unexpectedly travels back to the moment before their first meeting, allowing them to reconnect and rekindle their romance.

Into the Blue

Thirteen year old Julija and her mother flee their abusive household to find refuge on an idyllic Croatian island where Julija grew up. Emotionally scarred, Julija is desperate to reconnect with her best friend, Ana. But Ana is in love with a boy and Julija is no longer a priority.

Swain

Swain is inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Fanshawe, features a dreamlike narrative of a young man’s ritualized rejection of heterosexuality, as a mysterious woman in white gossamer pursues him through a ruined landscape.

Opening Night

A teenage boy navigates the final minutes before his first theater stage performance, which includes experiencing his first kiss. Despite his rising anxiety, he shares a romantic moment with a classmate.

12 Weeks

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

Dear Mr Shakespeare: Shakespeare Lives

An evocative and imaginative exploration of the racial tensions in Othello and how the themes in Shakespeare's play still resonate today.