Animated Shorts: BBC Introducing Arts (2021)

High Tide

When the recently divorced Tarik spends time alone in a holiday cottage on the Veluwe, he meets the owner of the house, Jonas. But when they seem to grow towards one-another, it proves difficult for Tarik to not let his true feelings emerge.

Postcards from the End of the World

Trapped in a seemingly dull family vacation, Dimitra, Dimitris and their two daughters will have to find a way out of a secluded island in the Mediterranean, when confronted with the unexpected end of the world.

Hotel Boy

The young Samir accompanies the politician Stefan to a hotel room. Samir is in love and has set everything aside to be able to go with Stefan, as they had planned. But under the surface lies a big misunderstanding, and outside in the rain a journalist is waiting for the next big headline.

Life in Color

An aging, closeted Alzheimer's patient, clashing against his strong-willed daughter, struggles to hold on to the memory of his long lost lover.

What's This Country Called Now?

A Bosnian woman, working as a reporter during the Siege of Sarajevo, interviews a living witness to the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1914, and his wisdom gives her a deeper understanding of the Bosnian War, and her role in it.

Juan Gabriel is Dead

Best friends Beto and Daniel spend most of their time together. Daniel struggles with his gender identity just to hide his feelings for Beto. To be himself, he has to overcome his fear by showing Beto what he truly feels.

Mitosis

Kaveh is an LGBT sculptor. He lives in Iran and lives in isolation because of his sexual orientation. He has a lover named Farhad. Their relationship is not very good. It is Kaveh who is not happy with this relationship, he lives in his workshop because of the repression of LGBTs in Iran. He is making a statue when he suddenly realizes that this statue is talking to him. The words of the statue are not clear and are more like chatter. He breaks up his relationship with Farhad like his previous relationships, because something more than sex requires a relationship. He enjoys being alone more, but now he realizes that Farhad has destroyed the only statue they made together. The whispering sound of the statue increases and every moment Kaveh's mental state is more disturbed, to the point that he works day and night to build that statue. The statue is completed as if the statue is the lost lover of Kaveh. By completing the statue of Kaveh, he becomes a statue.

In a Moment

Max isn't sure about his sexual orientation until he meets Leon at his new school. When Max is singing a song at a school concert something beautiful happens.

The Atomic Dream

Set against the aftermath of President Kennedy's assassination and the era's pervasive nuclear fears, Frank and his estranged mother-in-law, Sophia, must confront the strange and otherworldly realities of their fast-changing existence.

Dominant Chord

Country music star Adam has to choose between damaging his career by coming out in the closed-minded world of country music or losing his long-time partner Brian.

Beyond Plain Sight

Ryan is a popular member of his community. He’s charming, helping and a social butterfly but Ryan has a secret.

Like Father

A Jewish New Yorker is bedridden patriarch dying of lung cancer, confesses for the first time to son that he was always attracted to men. Despite his long-lasting marriage and faithfulness to wife.

Enclosed World

A short animation by Makoto Shinkai in Lightwave 3D. Inspired by Haruki Murakami's book "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" with music by Tenmon.

Kiko's Saints

Kiko, a Japanese illustrator on assignment in France, gets suddenly overwhelmed by a strange new inspiration, while she realizes she's been spying on a gay couple on the beach next to the chapel where she's working. Obsessed by such a vision, she will continue spying on those men and drawing them secretly. These drawings will slowly push her towards an encounter that will change her life and break the barriers she created around her.

Tiny Death

Christian (12) and his best friend have been invited over to an older boy from school. There, he enters a mysterious world. It becomes an overwhelming experience - an essential step towards puberty.

Gay Jesus

Once upon a time in a cheap Jerusalem hotel room, Jesus and Judas are spending their time away from Nazareth between hot, sweaty, carnal love and preparing sermons for Jesus' growing fanbase. Enter Mary Magdalene, jealousy, Satan, and the Romans, and the once-perfect love affair between Judas and Jesus becomes a hellish ring of fire, leading Judas to betray his beloved Christ and the Romans to punish everyone for trying to turn everyone gay.

Pria

Caught between the traditions of his upbringing in rural Indonesia and his idealization of Western freedom, a teenager struggles with the expectations of imminent manhood.

Pedro

Pedro gets home at dawn. Before the young boy falls asleep, his lonely mother drags him to the beach.

Killer Friends

Four friends go on a camping trip that one won't be coming back from alive...

Stay

When Ash invites his ex-boyfriend on a road trip to the Florida Keys, he doesn't mention that their weekend getaway is actually a dangerous drug deal.

My Sweet Prince

Alcopops, VHS tapes, cigarettes, boys, MSN Messenger, Placebo - this is 2003. Set on the Isle of Wight, fragments of the director's own teenage video diaries collide with the fictional story of 15-year-old Tommy in this short film about a boy's search for connection in the advent of the internet age. Infatuated with his best friend's boyfriend and unable to truly reveal himself to anyone, Tommy feels an overwhelming sense of isolation on the small chalk island he calls home. Desperate to be seen, he logs on to family computer, clicks connect and opens MSN.

Hey You

When two men arrange a hook-up, is who's top or bottom all they should be worried about? Hey You exposes how, with the convenience of social media and dating apps, our hard-fought rights and freedoms can be taken for granted and how, for many others, that fight isn't over.

Paseo

Plot unavailable

Panda Syndrome

A young boy, Bjørn, discovers on his 17th birthday that his problems with the girls might not be self-inflicted.

Wisdom

Emily Eximo finds herself sat in a strange room, with a strange man, who's sitting in a strange chair. Denton Elicient wants her to settle a debt she didn't even know she had.

Waiting Outside

A father strives to give his daughter a perfect life full of happy memories, in spite of a troubling diagnosis and a partner overseas.

Blood & Wine

Nadia, a decades old vampire, wants nothing more than to live a normal life. Things are going pretty well with the human Lucy, but will Nadia be able to keep her secret?

Intruders

In the midst of political upheaval in Brazil, Travis Mathews directs this startling and moving film of the intersection between class, privilege and sex. A man lives a lonely, exquisite lifestyle in his large, empty apartment. He hears a noise, of a man stumbling through the window in his bedroom. The man has a gun, and he shakes while he holds it. What follows is a tender, complex exploration of lust and desire between two very talented performers and the faultless Direction of Mathews.

Crimes of Diogo Alves

Diogo Alves is a Spanish fugitive that comes to the Portuguese capital terrorizing the inhabitants by his cut-throat methods against rich and poor people alike. He attacks the women launderers on the Lisbon Aqueduct and throws the bodies over the high wall, and assaults homes with his large band of criminals. Eventually arrested, he, his female companion and his henchmen are condemned to death by the court.

Limbo

Killed in war, a man must overcome the various obstacles he encounters in limbo to save his life and thus meet his son, about to be born.

Pool Blue

Pool Blue is an attempt which tells, without dialogue nor rationality, a connection fantasized between two men. It is the fantastical projection which reveals certain eroticism. Pointless and discreet, the desire is present, two men are careful, gauge to the point to create a link of seduction. This link is intelligently staged, it is invisible with the eyes of the other swimmers, mysterious for both men and very explicit for the spectator.

Pepper

The painful awakening of a couple after an evening of fantasies ...

Into the Night

Krysia, a teenage girl, leaves her home for the first time in weeks. At a party, she runs into Majka. The two girls slip away and set off on a journey that proceeds at a dizzying pace.

Give Up the Ghost

While doing their homework on a winter afternoon, schoolmates Charlie and Matt share a kiss. But Matt snaps and storms off. Later at a catechism lesson, Matt accuses Charlie of it not being consensual and an argument erupts.

And So We Put Goldfish in the Pool.

One summer day, 400 goldfish were found in the swimming pool of a secondary school. This is a story about the four 15-year-old girls who put them there.

Chaos Toad

Stuck living as a care giver for his distant ailing mother, Andy receives a surprise intervention from his fabulous childhood imaginary friend.

Antoine and Colette

Now aged 17, Antoine Doinel works in a factory which makes records. At a music concert, he meets a girl his own age, Colette, and falls in love with her. Later, Antoine goes to extraordinary lengths to please his new girlfriend and her parents, but Colette still only regards him as a casual friend. First segment of “Love at Twenty” (1962).

Paris Ficelle

Plot unavailable

Roller Coaster

A boys first weekend with the father after the divorce of his parents. Together with his friends, he makes a plan to turn that weekend into a horror trip, to punish his father. But then everything changes

Feral

A disturbed young man pushes away his exurban family to seek wildness in the woods. The boy's urge for the primitive manifests in his bedroom at home and in a wild dog he follows through the countryside.

Re \ Entry

'What happened? Where am I?' The man who wakes up alone in the woods has many questions. Is he dead and in the hereafter? The voice of God soberly answers his questions: Yep, that’s right. Traffic accident. But it’s not that bad, because everyone eventually dies. All the man’s questions, also about the meaning of life, are answered. In an equally entertaining and stimulating dialogue in English, the film evokes a comprehensive image of the universe and man’s place in it.

Nahjum

A prehistoric family's desperate search for a mythical source of life turns to tragedy when the egos and obsessions of its male members rise to the surface.

Nobody's Boy

A hustler named Oscar encounters both the light and dark of humanity in an alcohol fueled odyssey of sex, love, and death.

Five Steps to Accept Farewell

YeJoo and EunMin spent two years as a couple so far. One day, YeJoo wants to finish the relationship that she had with EunMin. EunMin gets angry and asks if there's another girl. Yejoo says she got a boyfriend.

Parallel Novel

A writer tries to force his character into suicide, but the character fights back.

Sonja's Grill

At Sonjas Grill, Bella is sitting around waiting for her boyfriend Gabbe. An old text-message conversation between Gabbe and his ex sheds new light on their relationship.