Passage (2020)

Boys on Film 18: Heroes

Boys On Film comes of age with uplifting and powerful tales recounting the lives of everyday heroes striving for their own identities and fighting for the right for us all to be ourselves. Volume 18: Heroes includes ten complete films: Dean Loxton's "Dániel" starring Csémy Balázs, Hilda Péter, and Henry Garrett… Niels Bourgonje's "Buddy" starring Daniel Cornelissen and Tobias Nierop… Tamara Shogaolu's animated "Half A Life"… Victor Lindgren's "Undress Me" starring Jana Bringlöv Ekspong and Björn Elgerd… Sam Ashby's "The Colour Of His Hair" starring Sean Hart and Josh O'Connor… Hope Dickson Leach's "Silly Girl" starring Ciara Baxendale, Mollie Lambert, and Jason Barker… Søren Green's "An Evening" starring Jacob Ottensten and Ulrik Windfeldt-Schmidt… Alejandro Medina's documentary "AIDS: Doctors And Nurses Tell Their Stories"… Kai Stänicke's "It's Consuming Me" with Volkmar Leif Gilbert… and Mikael Bundsen's "Mother Knows Best" starring Alexander Gustavsson and Hanna Ullerstam.

Flee

Recounted mostly through animation to protect his identity, Amin looks back over his past as a child refugee from Afghanistan as he grapples with a secret he’s kept hidden for 20 years.

No Goodbyes

Love in a concentration camp. A young Jewish gay man, Otto, is protected by a "kapo" (a fellow prisoner) and an SS guard who unexpectedly ends up saving his life.

Young And Afraid

In 2017 Petter (24) decides to end his life, but at the very last moment, is stopped by the police. His best friend and fellow film student Sverre is determined to help and suggests making a film to keep Petter busy and focused on getting better. Equipped with a camera, they search the streets of Oslo to find out how other troubled souls deal with their lives. With a naive and spontaneous approach, they end up in dramatic and unpredictable situations. They meet Monica, whose past has led her to self-injurious behavior. Oliver and Cornelia, both escaping their demons with alcohol and drugs, and Emma, who is transsexual, lesbian, and proud of who she is. They also meet Miriam, who becomes Petter's girlfriend. By getting to know their destructive patterns, Petter becomes aware of his own. He sets off on a bumpy therapeutic journey, that eventually brings light into his darkness. Young and Afraid is an authentic and raw documentary about choosing to live.

Pick up the Wind

A short film following Anthony, a young child from the small, rural town of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. We see him in different moments of his daily life as he interacts with different forms of environmental, familial, and social influences. While Anthony displays contradictory traits of creativity, destruction, rigidity, and tenderness as he interacts with his external and internal worlds, we see a story built from the the multidimensionality of Anthony's layered personality as a young man.

Brothers of the Night

Soft boys by day, kings by night. The film follows a group of young Bulgarian Roma who come to Vienna looking for freedom and a quick buck. They sell their bodies as if that's all they had. What comforts them, so far from home, is the feeling of being together. But the nights are long and unpredictable.

Mon amour

Mourning his boyfriend Frédéric's death from an overdose, the French filmmaker David Teboul goes to Siberia on a ritual journey. Out here, under the enormous dome of the skies, he finds the free space to disentangle his thoughts again. And in the villages, both young and old people unexpectedly turn out to be prepared to respond to his invitation to talk about an event that changed their lives. Life, death, love and existence.

Chet Larson

A mockumentary following the rise, fall and continued tribulations of former internet personality Chet Larson and those associated with him.

Strike a Pose

In 1990, seven young male dancers joined Madonna on her most controversial world tour. Their journey was captured in Truth or Dare. As a self-proclaimed 'mother' to her six gay dancers plus straight Oliver, Madonna used the film to make a stand on gay rights and freedom of expression. The dancers became paragons of pride, inspiring people all over the world to dare to be who you are. 25 years later, the dancers share their own stories about life during and after the tour. What does it really take to express yourself?

A Morte de Narciso

Documentary about the work of photographer Alair Gomes, one of the first artists to introduce male nudity in Brazilian photography.

Homosexuals

With a focus on the everyday life of a gay couple, and featuring interviews with a number of gay people, the film gives an account of the difficulties faced by this minority.

The Feelings Are the Same

Interview-based documentary about the conditions for gays and lesbians in Danish society.

Parade

A short film on the first Gay Pride March in San Francisco in 1971 the year after the Stonewall Riots. This film was lost for 50 years before it was found and restored by SF Art & Film.

I Am My Own Woman

The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign as a trans woman and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.

Alfredo Doesn't Like Goodbyes

Based on family interviews and records of his trajectory, the director André Medeiros Martins performs an analysis of his mother's life history while documenting his own journey through self-knowledge. André is an artist obsessed with sex and who tries to find the reasons for these obsessions in stories about his late mother. From the exhibition of his works and reports from family members, he creates this auto-fictional documentary.

Coming Out

Following a series of gay teen suicides, a deeply closeted student confronts his repressed sexuality in search of acceptance from his family, community, and himself.

Gay Porn: Guided Tour

An unusual journey into the heart of gay porn, a universe populated by a host of planets, which professionals commonly call niches. These are all fantasies of inclined tastes and libidos. Olivier Ghis tries to understand where these famous niches come from and what desires they meet.

Guilty of Loving: The Ordeal of Gays in Tunisia

The director meets Amir and Ramzi in a café in a small Tunisian town. They don't want to be seen there. They have to find a discreet place to talk. Like many other gay couples in Tunisia, Amir and Ramzi are living a nightmare since the Tunisian Revolution. With them, the director will discover the daily life of the Tunisian homosexual couples, even in the discrete parties organized in hotels of the country.

Kenedi Is Getting Married

Kenedi is in a huge debt after building a house for his family. He finds himself searching for any kind of work to support himself, for as little as 10 EUR per day, a scarce amount to help him relief his debt. Ultimately, Kenedi decides to look for money in sex business. Initially offering his services to older ladies and widows, he expands his 'business' to offer sex to wealthy men. When he finds out about new liberal European laws on gay marriages, Kenedi sees prospects in looking for a "marriage material", to renew his search for a legal status in EU. The opportunity arises during EXIT Music Festival, when he meets Max, a guy from Munich. But will their promising relationship bring the solution to Kenedi's problems?

Transhood

Filmed over five years in Kansas City, this documentary follows four transgender kids – beginning at ages 4, 7, 12, and 15 – as they redefine “coming of age.” These kids and their families show us the intimate realities of how gender is re-shaping the family next door in a unique and unprecedented chronicle of growing up transgender in the heartland.

Young Wrestlers

“Let’s see if you gained any weight. 26,3 kilogram. Ahmet, you need to eat more. Double meals.” Like other boys their age, Baran, Ahmet and their classmates wrestle with the desire for recognition, with homesickness and with their target weights. Most of all though, they wrestle with, and against, one another. They are comrades and competitors, united by one and the same dream: Olympic gold! In their wrestling academy in the Turkish province of Amasya, which is well known for this traditional form of combat sport, they undergo strength and endurance training, they learn lifts and throws, they urge each other on and they console one another. Always responding to the boys’ needs, the trainers give the boys tough love, sometimes fatherly, sometimes strict and disciplinary. The film’s intimate documental camera bears close witness to the fine line between friendship and competition, victory and the lesson of how to lose.

Gay Black Group

The formation of the Gay Black Group was a landmark in gay black history. Meeting at Gay's the Word, a bookshop in Bloomsbury, London, it provided a sounding board and support for gay and black communities of the 1980s.

Jonas and the Backyard Circus

Jonas is 13 years old and his life's dream is to maintain the circus that he created in his backyard. While he faces this challenge, he will live the adventure of growing up.

Like Water Through Stone

In the Espinhaço Mountains one winter, a group of small-town Brazilian girls are experiencing the end of their youth. Impossible romances leave marks on their bodies and the surrounding landscape. Each of the friends finds her own particular way to overcome the loneliness and to live within a tangle of uncertainty.

Drag Kids

Four precocious preteens perfect their lip-synching and runway walks in anticipation of the biggest drag performance of their lives at Montreal Pride, in this fierce and joyous celebration of acceptance and self-discovery.

Packed Lunch

What is it about Speedos? Well here Australian director Tim Hunter is on a mission to find the answer to the question of why so many gay men can't seem to get enough of hunks in tight fitting trunks? Although somehow I think the answer can be found in the question! Anyway in a bid to discover the truth, Hunter has carried out a series of interviews with men who have more than a passing interest in this briefest of garment, including that of Speedo designer Peter Travis, who here relates his part in the history of 'the male equivalent of the Wonder Bra.'

When Love Is Gay

Documentary about men who break the silence about their homosexuality. They talk about their difficulty to accept and to make others accept their difference, of the place of sensuality in their lives, of their fierce desire to love freely. A film that ,in celebrating the love of a young couple, proposes to break the sometimes negative image around the gay world.

Boys on Film 23: Dangerous to Know

Boys on Film presents ten encounters from across the globe, where the dangerous allure of a risky attraction yields emotional results — proving that the age-old adage of taking the plunge is as relevant — and sexy — as ever before. The 10 short films are: My Uncle's Friend [O Amigo do Meu Tio] (2021); Budapest, Closed City [Budapest, zárt város] (2021); Eden (2020); Chaperone (2022); Break Me [Knus meg] (2018); By His Will [שעשני כרצונו] (2021); Red Ants Bite (2019); Jim (2022); Hornbeam (2022); Too Rough (2022).

Lance Loves Michael: The Lance Bass Wedding

On February 5, 2015, Lance Bass and Michael Turchin made television history when their wedding, which took place Dec. 20, 2014, premiered on E!. LANCE LOVES MICHAEL — a 90-minute special — follows the couple from the early stages of planning right up to their vows on the altar.

Gemmel & Tim

In 2017 and 2019, Gemmel “Juelz” Moore (26) and Timothy “Tim” Dean (55), two gay black men, died of a meth overdose at the West Hollywood apartment of white businessman, activist & political donor Ed Buck (66). The parallel stories of these two men, are intimately told by the friends who loved them, grieve their loss, and who hope to protect others from similarly tragic fates.

#Familiar #Touch #Lost #Figures

Can we reinvent our lost queer histories? #Familiar #Touch #Lost #Figures is about queer ancestry and diaspora, a hybrid of cultural traditions and contemporary queer identity. It explores feelings of guilt and joy, and intimacy between femmes of colour.

The Circle

A young teacher in Zurich in the 1950s falls in love with a transvestite star but is torn between his bourgeois existence and his commitment to homosexuality. He joins a gay organization that is eventually seen as the pioneer of gay emancipation in Europe.

How to Find Love

Charlie is an awkward teenage boy who can't get over his ex-girlfriend. After his attempt to win her back goes horribly wrong, he and his bumbling friends (Ben and Ricky) head to the streets to try and learn how to find love. As their fourth friend films them, the boys hear a variety of perspectives on what love is, and attempt improve their abilities to make women swoon.

Here I Am...Here You Are

Eccomi ... Eccoti unfolds as a virtual road trip navigating between Italy and Lebanon. Conditioned to live in a long-distance relationship with his partner because of strict European visa regulations, the director patches together the shared moments in an attempt to create a possible day-to-day reality for their couple. With a lyrical, ambient soundscape set atop a dreamy, atmospheric visual style that oscillates between still photography and moving images, the film explores what it means to be gay in contemporary Beirut and existential discomfort that blocks one from reaching a sense of complete-ness. Does such in-completeness have to do, in particular, with being gay? Or is it related to a grander malaise endemic to the human condition?

Better Gay Sex

This is one of the most lavishly produced erotic gay videos ever made. Featuring eight of Britain's sexiest guys, "Better Gay Sex" illustrates the beauty, passion and sensuality of man on man sex. Experience the spectrum of gay sex as out gorgeous guys take you through the best their bodies (and yours) have to offer. Amazing sex is all about having the most wonderful mind blowing fun. Sex gives you a more confident outlook on the whole of you life. This video won't just turn you on with its explicit red hot imagery, it'll show you how to really enjoy one of the most important aspects of your life — SEX!!!

Colfax Avenue: Main Street Colorado

The story of the longest commercial thoroughfare in America. As both neighborhood main street and transcontinental highway, Colfax Avenue provides a telling reflection of the people and events that shaped metropolitan Denver. Along the banks of this concrete river, the link between history and destiny can be discovered.

Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation

The parallel lives of writer Truman Capote (1924-84) and playwright Tennessee Williams (1911-83): two friends, two geniuses who, while creating sublime works, were haunted by the ghosts of the past, the shadow of constant doubt, the demon of addictions and the blinding, deceptive glare of success.

I'm a Porn Star

I'm a Porn Star follows the lives of guys in the neighborhood who are likely a lot more famous than you - at least on the Internet. There are an estimated 370 million pornographic websites on-line. Porn is now a thirteen BILLION dollar business. So who's doing all this moonlighting? Turns out -- probably some people you know.

An Army of Lovers

Documentary about the fight for LGBTQ-rights in Sweden during the 1970s.

Intimitäten

Every human being knows it: privacy. Where do intimate moments occur, moments in which intimacy is openly expressed. In search of these moments, a gay-porno production firm, the Wa(h)re-Liebe television reporting team from Berlin, flew to Majorca with Lukas Schmid, a documentary film director. Intimitaeten is a cinema-direct documentary film in which various ways of approaching and analysing intimacy are explored.

The Gift

Controversial documentary about gay men purposely contracting the AIDS virus.