The Male Gaze: Bitter Sweet (2024)

Bird

12-year-old Bailey lives with her single dad Bug and brother Hunter in a squat in North Kent. Bug doesn’t have much time for his kids, and Bailey, who is approaching puberty, seeks attention and adventure elsewhere.

One Afternoon

A strict father and his two boys share a calm life in a creaky old home. One summer moment changes everything for the brothers.

Transamerica

A transgender woman takes an unexpected journey when she learns that she had a son, now a teenage runaway hustling on the streets of New York.

Requiem for a Dream

The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.

2:37

A contemporary, ensemble drama that tells the complex tale of six high school students whose lives are interwoven with situations that so many of today's youth are faced with. The story takes place during a normal school day. At precisely 2:37 a tragedy will occur, affecting the lives of a group of students and their teachers.

Lolo

Lolo is an openly gay 11-year-old boy trying to finally convince Max, his first love, to go public with their relationship at the school party. Max also wants a relationship but Lolo might not be the one. Lolo’s best friends, Elena and Toby, help him to overcome this situation and give him the support that he needs.

Pray for Us

In a desolate supermarket, a religious woman's peaceful evening is interrupted by the sudden arrival of three punks, who are running away from the police and hiding something much more valuable than money.

Alexander

Alexander, the King of Macedonia, leads his legions against the giant Persian Empire. After defeating the Persians, he leads his army across the then known world, venturing farther than any westerner had ever gone, all the way to India.

So Vam

After being kidnapped by a predatory old vampire, Kurt becomes part of a gang of rebellious vampires who feed on bigots and abusers. As a vampire he finally knows empowerment and belonging, but his maker is still out there and until Kurt faces the monster, he will never truly be free. But this time he won’t face it alone.

Kisses to Kevin

Kevin and Sam meet for a hookup but what if they stay together a little bit longer?

Chasing Pavement

Chasing Pavement stars Remy Mars as Elijah Young, an 'urban' porn star who is preparing to leave the adult entertainment industry and start a new career as a chef. His new roommate, Takeshi, played by Tokio Sasaki, is a Japanese immigrant who is looking for a new start in the information technology field. Takeshi, who feels completely invisible in the United States, becomes obsessed with his extremely visible flatmate. Takeshi's obsession culminates in a violation of boundaries that brings the two together for a moment of intimacy that neither will soon forget. The movie also stars Antonio Biaggi as Bryson Colon, a man with a troubled past who frequently hires Elijah as an escort, but wants much more.

Sebastian

In this thoughtful Scandinavian drama, a teenage boy wrestles with his sexuality and learns that most of his deepest fears were unfounded. Sebastian is almost 17 when he figures out that he is a homosexual. Though he lives with wonderful, stable parents and has a good-hearted sister, he finds himself wracked with turmoil and suddenly withdraws from them all. The more they try to understand why, the more distant Sebastian becomes. Things get worse when he falls in love with the handsome Ulf, who comes from an unstable, tempestuous home. Sebastian realizes he is lucky, but still can't help but become irritated when he brings Ulf home for dinner. His parents are too nice and this quietly infuriates their son. Eventually they leave the two boys alone in the house. Sebastian have great fun doing teenage guy stuff, but then they take a bath together and it is then that Sebastian tries to kiss Ulf.

Only Good Things

Catalão, Brazil, 1984. The rural region of Batalha dos Neves is made up of large crop pastures, a few farms and divided in half by the São Marcos River. Antonio lives alone and isolated taking care of his small farm until the day he encounters Marcelo, a lonely motorcycler who suffers an accident crossing the region. Antonio takes care of Marcelo’s wounds. The two fall in love and live a story that transforms, destabilizes, and causes ruptures in each of them.

DAKAICHI - I'm being harassed by the sexiest man of the year - the Movie: Spain Arc

Azumaya and Takato are set to star in "Blood Wedding," a two-person play that incorporates flamenco dancing; Takato decides to travel to Spain to learn about passion.

Along Came Love

1947. On a beach, Madeleine, a waitress in a hotel restaurant, mother of a little boy, meets François, a rich and cultivated student. The force of attraction that pushes them towards each other is commensurate with the secrecy that each carries. If we know what Madeleine wants to leave behind by following this young man, we discover over time, what François is desperately trying to flee by mixing Madeleine's fate with his.

Boys On Film 5: Candy Boy

Boys On Film 5: Candy Boy features nine award-winning short films. Boys will be boys in Pascal-Alex Vincent's FAR WEST and CANDY BOY, where a farmyard and an orphanage get a gay makeover. GO-GO REJECT sees Flashdance obsessive Daniel aim for the stars, as SWEAT has Holby City's David Paisley infiltrating a bath house with unexpected results. Meanwhile, love proves to be timeless when LAST CALL unites past and present, but TWOYOUNGMEN, UT. hints at an uncertain future. Looking back on the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, BLOCKS focuses on the sexual awakening of a peeping Tom. Two more young boys, a confused JAMES and mute DAVID, both reach out for an experienced hand, but will they find what they are looking for?

Alaska is a Drag

Leo's dreams of being an international drag superstar are hard fought working in a fish cannery in Alaska.

Breakfast on Pluto

In the 1970s, a young transgender woman called “Kitten” leaves her small Irish town for London in search of love, acceptance, and her long-lost mother.

Imagine Me & You

During her wedding ceremony, Rachel notices Luce in the audience and feels instantly drawn to her. The two women become close friends, and when Rachel learns that Luce is a lesbian, she realizes that despite her happy marriage to Heck, she is falling for Luce. As she questions her sexual orientation, Rachel must decide between her stable relationship with Heck and her exhilarating new romance with Luce.

Other People

David, a struggling comedy writer fresh off from breaking up with his boyfriend, moves from New York City to Sacramento to help his sick mother. Living with his conservative father and much-younger sisters for the first time in ten years, he feels like a stranger in his childhood home. As his mother’s health declines, David frantically tries to extract meaning from this horrible experience and convince everyone (including himself) that he's "doing okay.”

Hair

Upon receiving his draft notice and leaving his family ranch in Oklahoma, Claude heads to New York and befriends a tribe of long-haired hippies on his way to boot camp.

Far from Heaven

In 1950s Connecticut, a housewife's life is upended by a marital crisis and mounting racial tensions in society.

The Dare Project

A popular high school hunk Johnny takes a late-night dip with cute loner Ben. Fifteen years later, these two men — who haven’t seen each other since a late-night tryst in high school — bump into each other unexpectedly.

Tattoo

Paulete, the star of a daring theater group, is visited by his military brother-in-law, the young Fininha. A torrid relationship arises between the two, and now the soldier must deal with the prevailing repression during the Brazilian military dictatorship.

101 Reykjavik

Thirty-year-old Hlynur still lives with his mother and spends his days drinking, watching porn and surfing the net while living off unemployment checks. A girl is interested in him, but he stands back from commitment. His mother's Spanish flamenco teacher, Lola, moves in with them for Christmas. On New Year's Eve, while his mother is away, Hlynur finds out Lola is a lesbian, but also ends up having sex with her. He soon finds out he and his mother are sharing more than a house. Eventually he must find out where he fits into the puzzle, and how to live life less selfishly.

Farewell My Concubine

Two boys meet at an opera training school in Peking in 1924. Their resulting friendship will span nearly 70 years and endure some of the most troublesome times in China's history.

Wonder Boys

Grady is a 50-ish English professor who hasn't had a thing published in years—not since he wrote his award winning 'Great American Novel' 7 years ago. This weekend proves even worse than he could imagine as he finds himself reeling from one misadventure to another in the company of a new wonder boy author.

Test

San Francisco, 1985. Two opposites attract at a modern dance company. Together, their courage and resilience are tested as they navigate a world full of risks and promise, against the backdrop of a disease no one seems to know anything about.

Dying Briefly

Sebastián is accepted into an important dance company so he decides to leave his family. When Arsenio joins the company, they begin a torrid romance.

Cabaret

Inside the Kit Kat Club of 1931 Berlin, starry-eyed singer Sally Bowles and an impish emcee sound the clarion call to decadent fun, while outside a certain political party grows into a brutal force.

Water Lilies

Set during a sultry summer in a French suburb, Marie is desperate to join the local pool's synchronized swimming team, but is her interest solely for the sake of sport or for a chance to get close to Floriane, the bad girl of the team? Sciamma, and the two leads, capture the uncertainty of teenage sexuality with a sympathetic eye in this delicate drama of the angst of coming-of-age.

The Basketball Diaries

A high school basketball player’s life turns upside down after free-falling into the harrowing world of drug addiction.

Loev

When hot shot, Wall Street dealmaker Jai thinks of putting some pleasure into his 48 hour business trip to Mumbai, Sahil, his young, music-producer friend, drops everything, including his reckless boyfriend Alex, to help him execute the perfect getaway. Hiking the hills and canyons of Maharashtra, amidst half-attempted conversations and sudden silences, business calls and old jokes, the friends discover there is more than just time-zones keeping them apart. Things take another turn when Alex shows up with a new male-companion at his side, throwing up old conflicts and bringing unanswered questions to the fore.

Philadelphia

Two competing lawyers join forces to sue a prestigious law firm for AIDS discrimination. As their unlikely friendship develops their courage overcomes the prejudice and corruption of their powerful adversaries.

The Opposite of Sex

A 16-year-old girl visits her gay half-brother and ends up seducing his boyfriend, thus wreaking havoc on all of their lives.

May

A socially awkward veterinary assistant with a lazy eye and obsession with perfection descends into depravity after developing a crush on a boy with perfect hands.

Beautiful Thing

Set during a long, hot summer on the Thamesmead Estate in Southeast London, where three teenagers edge towards adulthood.

My Father, Die

Deaf and mute since having his hearing knocked out at the age of 12, Asher has been training for almost two decades to avenge himself on Ivan, the man that killed his older brother, 21 years ago. And now that his nemesis is out of prison, he gets his chance. But Asher's target also happens to be his father.

As You Like It

A modern-day, all-male re telling of Shakespeare’s comedy classic about lovelorn lads, vengeful men, shameless hussies and mind games. Set in the contemporary American west, with original language.

I Love You Phillip Morris

Steven Russell leads a seemingly average life – an organ player in the local church, happily married to Debbie, and a member of the local police force. That is until he has a severe car accident that leads him to the ultimate epiphany: he’s gay and he’s going to live life to the fullest – even if he has to break the law to do it. Taking on an extravagant lifestyle, Steven turns to cons and fraud to make ends meet and is eventually sent to the State Penitentiary where he meets the love of his life, a sensitive, soft-spoken man named Phillip Morris. His devotion to freeing Phillip from jail and building the perfect life together prompts him to attempt (and often succeed at) one impossible con after another.

Half

Working at a transgender bar, Min-a is a female with male genitals. When her colleague is assaulted by a male customer, she steps in to help, only to accidentally kill the assaulter. At the court, Min-a insists that she had no choice ? she had to protect her colleague - but the situation is not favorable to her. Taking advantage of her sexual identity, the prosecutor drives the case as if the murder were a result out of jealousy, and Min-a’s own lawyer does not pay attention to her situation. Not until Min-a is placed in a men’s jail and is seized with terror do the human rights issues for transgender people emerge. Min-a is finally transferred to a prison for females, but still she suffers from misunderstanding. Presenting the transgender human rights issues as a court drama, this film tries to correct the myriad misunderstandings toward transgender people.

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.

Lihis

The film splits itself between two timelines. In 2006, Ada is basing her thesis on a massacre that occurred twenty years prior in a village called Acacia. Her mother Cecilia was part of a fact-finding mission into a massacre, and Ada’s inquiries bring up her history as a member of the NPA. The other timeline traces the relationship of Ka Felix and Ka Jimmy, two rebels who fall in love, despite the movement’s laws against such a pairing.

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.

Mascarpone

Antonio is a 30 year old family man, whose life finds an unexpected twist when he's suddenly dumped by his husband, whom he depends both psychologically and economically: he needs to find a new place to stay, a job and a new purpose in life. Antonio finds a room in an apartment owned by Denis and starts to work in a bakery owned by Luca, while attending pastry school. Through this process he discovers that it was wrong of him to give up his independence for the sake of his relationship in the past.

Love Bites

Just out of their teens, young men Liam and Anatole were in the throes of an exciting new relationship- until they had a fight, and Anatole disappeared. Liam can’t accept the breakup. And, since his ex-boyfriend doesn’t reply to his calls and text messages, Liam decides to follow him to a Halloween party organized by one of Anatole’s friends to try and find him. The wild night that ensues will test both boys’ true feelings for each other, as well as force them to confront some hard inner truths once and for all.

A Man's Voice

Paulo, a young gay boy with an abusive mother, meets Tom, a young gay man who makes his money bedding women.

Wilde

Oscar Wilde is a married playwright who has occasionally indulged his weakness for male suitors. After much toil, Wilde debuts 'The Importance of Being Earnest' in London, and a chat at the theatre with Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas leads to a full-fledged romance. However, this affair leads to a legal dispute with Lord Alfred's oppressive father, the Marquess of Queensberry, and, given the local anti-gay laws, Wilde is jailed. Wilde's vast intellect helps him survive until he regains his freedom.

C.R.A.Z.Y.

A young French Canadian, one of five boys in a conservative family in the 1960s and 1970s, struggles to reconcile his emerging identity with his father's values.

One Way

Wan Hong-Yuan and Chen Jyun-Kai have been friends for years. One just broke up with his girlfriend, the other can't find a job. They decide to go to the mountain.

Mona Lisa Smile

Katherine Watson is a recent UCLA graduate hired to teach art history at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College, in 1953. Determined to confront the outdated mores of society and the institution that embraces them, Katherine inspires her traditional students, including Betty and Joan, to challenge the lives they are expected to lead.

Open Seas

A coming of age story of three young friends during their student years in Amsterdam.

Moneyboys

Fei works illegally to support family, but they reject his lifestyle. Through Long, Fei finds hope, until encountering Xiaolai, his past love, who makes him confront his guilt.

An Affirmative Act

"An Affirmative Act" is pro-gay marriage film, starring Charles Durning, Eric Etebari, Costas Mandylor, Rachael Robbins, and Blanche Baker, about a lesbian couple where one pretends to be a man in order for the two to get married and equal benefits. A slice of life of a young, professional married couple with their darling baby turns a sharp, dark corner when the pair are arrested and charged with several counts of fraud. The reason: Terry and Samantha Succi aren't the man and woman that they purported to be... Terry and Samantha married under false pretenses, ignoring state law that discriminates against homosexual partners and prohibits them from receiving the same rights and benefits as their straight counterparts.

Minyan

In a rapidly changing New York of the 1980s, a Russian Jewish teenager wrestles with his identity, faith, and sexuality, all of which seem irreconcilable until he befriends two closeted men in his grandfather's senior housing complex.

Dry Wind

The area around Catalan in Brazil’s state of Goiás is dry, very dry. Sandro’s life here is somewhat monotonous. He works in a fertiliser factory, goes swimming and spends his evenings doing jigsaw puzzles of landscapes. When Maicon, a man straight out of a Tom of Finland illustration, shows up in their small town and flirts with Ricardo, Sandro’s burgeoning feelings of jealousy set a change in motion.

Open

OPEN is a hallucinogenic journey through gender, identity, the body, love and how those can be shared by two people. The film consists of interlocking stories lines- the first about two trans women in a pandrogynous relationship in which they simultaneously receive plastic surgery treatments to mirror each other's features to ideally form into a single person. The second story follows a trans man and his new (cisgender) boyfriend as they run away from home and push against their own personal boundaries while dealing with his unexpected pregnancy.

Looking: The Movie

Patrick returns to San Francisco for the first time in almost a year to celebrate a momentous event with his old friends. In the process, he must face the unresolved relationships he left behind and make difficult choices about what’s important to him.

Amusement Park

Anonymous figures pass through the gates of a park at night, seeking adventure in its dark alleys. An amusement park is ruled by the laws of desire.

Time to Leave

Romain, 31, a fashion photographer with terminal cancer, elects to die alone, preparing others to live past him rather than prolong the inevitable with chemotherapy or be smothered in sympathy by those who know him.

Naked Lunch

Blank-faced bug killer Bill Lee and his dead-eyed wife, Joan, like to get high on Bill's pest poisons while lounging with Beat poet pals. After meeting the devilish Dr. Benway, Bill gets a drug made from a centipede. Upon indulging, he accidentally kills Joan, takes orders from his typewriter-turned-cockroach, ends up in a constantly mutating Mediterranean city and learns that his hip friends have published his work -- which he doesn't remember writing.

The Nature of Us

In the autumn after high school, 18-year-old boys Elly and Yona form a deep connection that inspires them to embrace their passions, but as they navigate love and self-discovery, their bond is tested in unexpected ways.

Chasing Amy

Holden and Banky are comic book artists. Everything is going good for them until they meet Alyssa, also a comic book artist. Holden falls for her, but his hopes are crushed when he finds out she's a lesbian.

Natives

Anita grew up on the Seneca Indian reservation, and for the first time ever, she's bringing her partner Rachel to meet her parents.

Bareback ou la Guerre des sens

A cinephile meets his favourite film maker on a beach in Ramatuelle. He proposes a film project to the director based on the painful adventures that he has just experienced. The two men work on the scenes, each in its own way. The film maker keeps pushing the project, arguing that the shooting is not good. But perhaps there's another reason not to leave the good adventure.

The Israeli Boys

Secrets, lies, surprises and more are explored in this rich selection of gay short films from Israel. The 6 short films are: Three (2018); A Trip to the Desert (2016); Rubber Dolphin (2018); Stav (2018); After His Death (2017); Leave of Absence (2016).

Altered Innocence Vol. 1

A vibrant anthology of LGBTQ+ short films and music videos that delve into the complexities of youth, identity, and desire. This diverse collection showcases a range of cinematic voices—both emerging and established—exploring the exhilaration, vulnerability, and confusion of coming-of-age through stories that celebrate queer love, self-discovery, and the breaking of societal boundaries. Blending narrative shorts, experimental visuals, and music-driven pieces, the anthology offers an evocative, multifaceted portrait of innocence transformed.

Sagrada Travesti do Evangelho

Plot unavailable

Eastern Boys

Arriving from all over the Eastern Bloc, the men who loiter around the Gare du Nord train station in Paris are scraping by however they can, forming gangs for support and protection, ever fearful of being caught by the police and deported. When the middle-aged, bourgeois Daniel approaches a boyishly handsome Ukrainian who calls himself Marek for a date, he learns the young man is willing to do anything for some cash.

Chill Out

The film tells the story of an unusual love triangle between Johan, Max, and Anna. The action takes place in Berlin after the unification of its eastern and western parts, against the background of its reconstruction and rebuilding.

Tahara

Two best friends attend the funeral of a Hebrew school classmate who died by suicide and accidentally damage their friendship beyond repair.

The Uninhabitable Ones

A dance group rehearses for their latest performance Inabitáveis about black homosexuality. While the choreographer conducts research and gives guided tours, he meets Pedro, a young trans girl looking for her own means of expression. She desperately wants to be taught by him.