Life in Darkness (2018)

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.

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.

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 ...?

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.

Tooty's Wedding

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

42plus

When the beautiful, efficient and successful Christine, 42, arrives at their summer beach home with her husband and teenage daughter, a young hitchhiker catches her eye. What follows is the story of a woman who frees herself, tears her life into pieces and puts it back together in a different order.

The Hurt Locker

During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work.

The Marvelous Visit

In a small French village, an angel appears disguised as a beautiful young blond.

Amor

An anguished woman awaits her love. A film is made about this. The parallels between the love between the woman and the film team are interspersed and show how this feeling can be both a pain and a joy.

Make the Yuletide Gay

The holidays get overly festive as Olaf "Gunn" Gunnunderson, an out-and-proud gay college student, crawls back into the closet to survive the holidays with his parents. But when his boyfriend, Nathan, shows up at their doorstep unannounced, Gunn must put on a charade to keep the relationship a secret. With pressure mounting from all sides, will Gunn come out before the truth does?

I Never Thought

Diego, a young student, lives in the clutches of classmates who harass him daily because of his physical appearance and sexual orientation. Finally he must make a decision that will change his life forever.

Rutina

A closeted gay teen has to break through a daily routine that keeps him tied into a life full of fear and homophobia, even though the struggle eventually will take him to confront society itself.

The Atomic Adventure

Algeria desert, 1961. France just detonated an atomic bomb. A patrol of seven soldiers is sent to ground zero to take samples and measure the current radioactivity. The more they advance, the more they perceive that they are entering a dangerous uncharted territory: the future…

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.

Nothing But Flowers

Ash and Max must question the future of their relationship when Max gets accepted into an East Coast graduate school program. On their final night together, they relive moments of their past before they're interrupted by a surprise going away party.

What She Likes

An emotional coming-of-age drama centered around Andou Jun, a gay student who is not out. He accepts a confession from his fujoshi classmate Miura Sae and they start dating. However, Jun is also seeing Makoto, but fails to tell Sae about his male lover.

Lovebugs

From his cozy library inside the walls of a suburban home, an intellectual snail tells of his life’s love, loss and change.

Hair or No Hair

Bel Davis has been hiding behind wigs for years until her Alopecia is exposed publicly. She uses this experience as a catalyst to break free of the shame she feels towards her baldness.

Open

When his father passes away, Vijay is forced to return home after a 10-year estrangement and open up to his mother about his sexuality.

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.

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.

Little Bird

Linh, a disillusioned Vietnamese woman carrying out evictions for a landlord, is instructed to evict Vietnamese refugees. She must decide whether to follow through with their eviction or reject it in solidarity.

Riley

The life of a disciplined high school athlete begins to unravel when his queer identity competes against the idea of who he was supposed to be.

Myth

A lonely ghost finds love at the graveyard.

Julie Baby

When a little girl gets called a whore for the first time, she discovers her place in the world but also her power to define herself.

Wonderkid

Wonderkid follows the inner turmoil of an unnamed football prodigy as he comes to terms with his own identity, struggling to reconcile his sexuality with his issues with alcohol and OCD.

Blood Sisters

"Blood Sisters", Danish filmmaker Louise Friedberg's sophomore short film, is the kind of flick that you simply can't take your eyes off of. It's a relatively simple story that has been played out time and time again: a young girl feels threatened by her best friend's new friend/neighbour, jealousy brews, and tempers flare.

The 24th Day

Tom and Dan's one-night stand turns into an intense power-play between captor and captive.

The Attendant

Frankie is a car park attendant at the spectacular Giant’s Causeway in Co. Antrim. His friend Cathy and her husband Paul are in trouble. Nevertheless as Frankie always says, "Something will turn up!"

The Object of My Affection

A pregnant New York social worker begins to develop romantic feelings for her gay best friend, and decides she'd rather raise her child with him, much to the dismay of her overbearing boyfriend.

The Emperor's Club

William Hundert is a passionate and principled Classics professor who finds his tightly-controlled world shaken and inexorably altered when a new student, Sedgewick Bell, walks into his classroom. What begins as a fierce battle of wills gives way to a close student-teacher relationship, but results in a life lesson for Hundert that will still haunt him a quarter of a century later.

Catopolis

A cat named Penny living in a desensitized, unstable world has to find a new job after she gets fired in order to make her dad proud.

Kinky Boots

Charles Price may have grown up with his father in the family shoe business in Northampton, central England, but he never thought that he would take his father's place. Charles has a chance encounter with the flamboyant drag queen cabaret singer Lola and everything changes.

Love and Magnets

Back in Montréal after spending five years in Guatemala, Julie moves in with her elder sister, Jeanne, a chronic liar and woman of rather loose sexual morals... Disillusioned with love, Jeanne is nevertheless engaged to Noël. However, Jeanne and Noël lead separate lives, and only communicate by leaving each other messages on the fridge.Everything suddenly becomes very complicated. Jeanne compels Julie to take up with Noël so she can have a fling with a passionate musician. Noël, meanwhile, sets Julie up with Michel -- without Jeanne's knowledge. Julie mixes things up even further. Egged on by her friend Marie-Ève, she alters the contents of the messages on the fridge in an attempt to breathe new life into Jeanne and Noël's relationship. Along the way, she also begins to fall for the seductive Michel. The tables are turned on everyone... In the game of love and truth, illusion leads to betrayal, but love conquers all.

Audrey

Audrey learns how to communicate with her dying mother who is in a hospice. It is Audrey’s last chance to prove to her mother that love supersedes identity issues. This is also her ultimate attempt to tell her mother what she has always been: her daughter.