Pastel (2023)

Jordskred

Plot unavailable

The Passenger

A man wakes up to find himself alone in a train carriage. During his train journey, unexpected events will lead him through to finally discover his lost memories.

The Vampire Lives Next Door to Us

A vampire living in a morgue encounters a drowned girl whose fate may be entwined with his own.

The Hummingbird and the Flower

Film about friendship becoming love.

Male Shorts: International V5

Get ready for the fifth volume of an incredible gay short film series! Male Shorts: International V5 features four brand-new short films focusing on gay, bi and generally curious men from around the globe. Iceberg takes place in Rio de Janeiro during the pandemic and follows two men who are haunted by the same mysterious spirit which seems to inhabit their plumbing. In Xavier, a young man uses his cell phone to come out to the world, his father and his best friend and crush all at once. The visually inventive Dreams concerns a documentary filmmaker who with his camera so that he can capture the dreams he has at night. Finally, It's Just Another Day follows Gabriele, who is torn between taking care of his sick father or running away to Rome with the man he loves. The 4 short films are: Dreams [Sonhos] (2022); It's Just Another Day [È solo un altro giorno] (2022); Xavier and Miguel [Xavier e Miguel] (2022); Iceberg (2022).

Ex-Husbands

Manhattan dentist Peter Pearce is facing a midlife crisis after his wife of 35 years leaves him. On the spur of the moment, he books a trip to Tulum, Mexico, only to crash his son’s bachelor party.

Kidschool

A young man's search for understanding leads to abduction and tragedy.

Beijo de Borboleta

Plot unavailable

Mom + Mom

Karole and Ali love each other and dream of starting a family together. They soon realize it won't be as simple as they'd hoped, and as their enthusiasm falters their love is challenged. In order to overcome the obstacles, they must believe in the power of their desire and support of their loved ones. If they can do that, miracles will happen…

Lúbtha

A short film inspired by true events and follows the story of a teenager dealing with his sexuality whilst having to grow up in early 90s Northern Ireland. As physical and mental abuse become a daily struggle, Fintan retreats into a world of anger and silence. With no solution on the horizon, he yearns to escape from the small town he’s been trapped in all his life, bringing nothing but his younger brother. As he comes closer to planning his journey to freedom, one night he is shown the reality of acceptance and love.

Burial at Sea

SEEBESTATTUNG (Burial at Sea) is the story about the development of a forbidden love between the teenage siblings Larissa and Fabian. After the death of their father, the two are left with an inseparable mixture of love, guilt, and loss. The film is to show the emotional turmoil of naive teenagers and, in a erotic-romantic way, sheds light on one of the last taboos in our society: incest.

Who Goes There?

Minnesota 1880: The trust of three Norwegian sisters is tested when a stranger appears on their prairie. When the eldest invites him in to heal her dying sister, she doesn’t realize that a supernatural force is crossing her threshold.

Mutism

Can Apollo speak? An opportunity to make friends arise after receiving his first invite to a party.

I Am Afraid to Forget Your Face

After an 82-day separation, Adam travels a rough road to be reunited with the one he loves, whatever it takes.

Stephanie

Stephanie smiles as she’s applauded by the crowd. The 11-year-old gymnast just won her first international title. Her coach Patricia embraces her as they both admire the gold medal they have worked so hard for. The girl is crushed with attention, everybody wants to have a picture with her and expresses their high hopes, but the more recognition she gets, the more she realises that the game only has begun.

The Lamb of God

The apparition of a bloodstain reaffirms the relentless cycle of life, filmed in all its fragility and complexity.

Mountain Cat

A troubled teenage girl is coerced into seeing a local shaman in search of spiritual healing. Trapped by ancient beliefs that serve only to pacify her mother, she finds peace in the physical realm by unleashing her repressed, youthful spirit on the unsuspecting shaman when she realises his true identity.

Malehood

This short film proposes just a profound fair of essence of manhood – the vulnerability, truth behind appearances and gestures defining a person, not exactly his genre or sexual preferences.

Operator

An Emergency Services Operator in a Fire Control Room has just started a long night shift when she picks up a call from a desperate young mother. An hour previously, Gemma had fallen asleep in front of the television and has now woken to find the room full of smoke. Her three year old son is trapped in his bedroom upstairs. Flames have started to creep down the stairs that Gemma must use in order to reach him. The operator’s guidance is all that Gemma can rely on in order to survive.

Desired by My Unknown Husband

A small-town boy hastily marries an urbanite without recognizing him. The husband later pursues his boss, unaware they're the same person. Through their affair, both learn commitment and trust. At the divorce site, the truth is revealed.

CATFISH

A dissatisfied young man creates a false identity to feel accepted. In trying to be someone he's not, he finds himself lost between reality and illusion, facing his own insecurities.

Locks

A young man in Oakland, California, wakes with a heavy heart and decides to take a walk through the neighborhood to the local barbershop.

Hermann

Every night, at eight o'clock, Hermann appears alone on stage to give a short violin concert, but his audience is not exactly that he believes it is. (Inspired by the real story of Hermann Schreiber, Vigo, Spain, 2020.)

Norwegian Dream

Robert moves from the Polish countryside to work on a fish processing factory on the coast of Norway. There he falls in love with Ivar who is openly gay and a member of the workers union. Robert is hiding his sexual orientation from the other Polish immigrant workers. When Ivar helps the Polish to start a strike for better working conditions at the factory, Robert has to choose between money or love.

Boyfriend

Bob is seeking new experiences. Levi is your perfect boyfriend.

The Boy with a Camera for a Face

The Boy with a Camera for a Face is satirical fairy tale about a boy born with a camera instead of a head, whose every moment is transformed by the fact he is recording it. Accompanied by a voice over narration read by Steven Berkoff, the film tells an epic story in fifteen minutes about the way we live today.

Eternal Memories

Miguel is being haunted by something he doesn't understand. In one of his sleepless nights, an angel named Mihael reveals himself to him.

Alive

Victoria is disabled and yearns for intimacy, so her assistant Ida offers to help by making a Tinder profile. Victoria gets a match, but the guy she is matching with is very shady, and Ida worries about what might happen if they meet.

Two Little Boys

A boy's love for his closeted bully drives him into an unconventional road to confession and its consequences.

Below Her Mouth

An unexpected affair quickly escalates into a heart-stopping reality for two women whose passionate connection changes their lives forever.

Abnegation

A woman's secret relationship is discovered putting her and those around her in danger.

Her Own Music

On the cusp of graduation, Maddie's blooming relationship with another student forces a choice between suppressing her newfound self or throwing out the last eighteen years of her life.

Family Commitments

The happy gay couple David and Khaled would love to marry publicly - if there weren't Khaled's homophobic father Faisal, David's pseudo orthodox Jewish acting mother Lea and a possible paternity and gallery insolvency.

Once and Forever

A biographical short about French fashion designer Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel.

My Beautiful Man ~special edit version~

With no friends, poor grades, and a stutter, Hira Kazunari (Riku Hagiwara) isn’t exactly enjoying his life as a high school student. With no dreams, and little ambition, Hira’s only hobby is to take photographs of his everyday life. With a new semester now starting, Hira doesn’t really expect things to change but when they take a turn for the worst, he’s caught completely off-guard. Rescued from a horribly uncomfortable situation by none other than the class’s “King”, Kiyoi Sou (Yusei Yagi), Hira can’t help the feelings of admiration that threaten to overwhelm him. Despite his best efforts to resist, Hira soon finds himself madly in love with the exceedingly handsome Kiyoi, but with such polar positions in the class, his chances of winning Kiyoi’s heart are slim. Or so it would seem. Uncovering Kiyoi’s secret dream, quite by accident, Hira soon realizes he and his crush now have something important connecting them.

My Beautiful Man: Eternal

As he nears graduation from university, Hira begins working as an assistant to the popular photographer Noguchi. Witnessing a professional job, he gradually distances himself from Kiyoi, not wanting to get in the way of him as he expands his career as an actor. Hira, who can only think "Kiyoi is a god" and a precious being, and Kiyoi, who wants to be an "ordinary" lover on an equal footing with Hira, miss each other little by little.

Moongazer's Moonlight Reverie

Plot unavailable

The Act

In 1965 - the eve of decriminalization for acts of male homosexuality in the U.K. - Matthews, a young gay man at odds with the world, discovers love, sex, and a new family in the backstreets and underground bars of Soho.

Fabiu

80-year-old retiree Arthur lives in a modest council home in Vienna. For quite some time he has lovingly been caring for his seriously ill wife Martha, with only female nurses assisting him. As he finds Fabiu, the new male Hungarian care worker, on his doorstep, his routine is broken. But soon the two men become closer and inside Arthur feelings of desire and suppressed longing start to rise.

Delta

After her parents' divorce, Julie visits her father Nicolas along with his new much younger boyfriend Christian. Christian tries to use her visit to resolve a fight with Nicolas in his favour.

The Piano Tuner

Adrien is a young pianist prodigy. He collapsed psychologically having failed in a renowned competition and henceforth works as a piano tuner. As remedy to this life, he invents a blind person's mask to penetrate into the intimacy of his customers. This subtlety allows Adrien to get back the taste for music. But since he sees things he should not see, Adrien ends up witnessing a murder.

The Dependent Variables

In a dark, velvety theatre, there is a first kiss between Pietro and Tommaso. When the lights come back on, however, the two students have different expectations of what might follow. The chaos of awakening desire in its complexity and sensuality is told and made almost physically tangible through looks and gestures, approach and retreat, hope and fear.

Permission

Marcus, a young intelligence soldier, became a national hero after his bravery in a terrorist attack. The authoritarian regime based on mass surveillance uses his image to value its action. As he returns to his parents' home for furlough, he will be faced with the reality of this ruthless administration he has come to embody in the media.

The Elderly Man

A former addict explains his wrongdoings on his deathbed

Le Syndrome des cœurs brisés – Takotsubo

Plot unavailable

An Affair to Remember!

A wife reveals to her younger husband that she is having an affair.

Two

This short film shows an encounter, through a series of games, between a street child from the shantytowns and a child of a rich family, stationed at his window. The film has no dialogue and the action moves through the attempts at one-upmanship evident in their successive display of their toys. Their rivalry (a kite shot down by a toy rifle, for example) concludes with the opposition between the world of noise (the toys inside the house) and that of music (the street child's flute). Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2006.

The House of Darkness

A potentially violent patient in an insane asylum is calmed when he hears a nurse playing the piano. But shortly afterwards he breaks free, eludes his pursuers, and acquires a gun. He soon comes to a house where a young wife is home alone, and there is a tense confrontation.

Rosie

Lorenz Meran, a successful gay author suffering acute writers' block, has to leave Berlin and return to eastern Switzerland to provide care for his aged mother, Rosie. But it is not only his mother's battle against being dictated to and losing her dignity that he is struggling with. It's also his own midlife crisis.

My Love...

The directorial debut of Sergei Potapov, a well-known director of original performances in his homeland, is capable of deeply touching any spectator. This movie will make the viewer feel. The painting is designed in a typical Asian style. The plot is built around two brothers. One of them is mentally ill, and the other can hardly be called "normal". Both brothers dream of the same thing. Rob the bank and leave the city. One chose Mexico and the other chose Hollywood. He dreams of becoming an actor. But their plans were not destined to come true. The ending of the film will make even the most staunch admirers of thrillers shudder. The mood of the picture and the denouement are very reminiscent of the vivid works of modern cult Asian directors.

Le 15/8

Mid-August in Paris (the title is a date: August 15) in a sunny, quiet apartment a young woman talks, thinks, reflects about herself, everyday life and little events in a long, uninterrupted monologue. The camera pictures her and her gestures in long, fixed shots moving around the rooms, the space, the light and shadows of a summer day.

Phantom Project

Waiting for his big dream (a film role) to come true, Pablo works as a training actor in a patient-care programme at a medical faculty and a paid participant in group therapy sessions. To make ends meet, he sublets a room in his apartment in a suburb of Santiago de Chile. However, he seems to have lost control when his housemate departs, leaving him with rent arrears, a collection of plants, a dog, a woolly jumper, and... a house ghost. Pablo is 30, and when it comes to romance he is also chasing apparitions. He is secretly still in love with his ex-boyfriend, a popular YouTuber.

My Emptiness and I

Raphi, from France, fantasises about romances with princes, and about starting a traditional family. But in reality, things aren’t like that. She works in a call centre in Barcelona, struggles with at times embarrassing dates, and is diagnosed by her therapist as having gender dysphoria. During this confusing, yet valuable period, we follow this trans woman as she makes her transition, as well as in her everyday life. She talks candidly with colleagues, queer friends, and the men she meets through apps. In spite of all the advice she receives, it turns out that it is mostly time and experience that will help her embrace her place in this world.

This I Wish and Nothing More

Bruno, a bisexual but closeted young man lives in rural Hungary with his girlfriend Mari. Also on the scene is her homosexual brother Ringo. Mari doesn't know that when the boys go off to work together in the city they raise cash by turning tricks and burglarizing houses.