Bruiser (2021)

The Tree of Life

The impressionistic story of a Texas family in the 1950s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father. Jack finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.

Three Touches

Several actors are members of a amateur soccer team. They followed in their preparations for a particular audition and in their personal life. With about 6 actors this delivers a broad picture of Italian life in which the question what it means to be a man is posed in the challenging circumstances of familily life, sex relationships, sport, cross gender roles and mafia.

Hjort

Plot unavailable

A Male

Carlos lives in a boarding school in the centre of Bogotá and longs to spend Christmas with his family. The circumstances around him force him to assume the male stereotype, in open contradiction to his true being. In private, Carlos acknowledges his sensitivity, his fragility and moves towards other forms of masculinity. At his 16 years of age, Carlos explores his sexual identity, discovers his fears, his desires, and all the things that real men never show.

Invincibl3

An experimental short film exploring fragile masculinity, small town mentality and cultural confusion, following a young Australian man on a spirit quest for significance and identity.

Drown

Len is a Surf Lifesaving champion, a legend in the cloistered surf club just like his father. When the younger, faster, and fitter Phil arrives at the club, Len’s legendary status starts to crumble. Then Len sees Phil arriving in the company of another man. Phil is gay.

Forces

An intense bromance between a gay football player and a straight military guy.

Beau Travail

Foreign Legion officer Galoup recalls his once glorious life, training troops in the Gulf of Djibouti. His existence there was happy, strict and regimented, until the arrival of a promising young recruit, Sentain, plants the seeds of jealousy in Galoup's mind.

Underground

Maxime is a young Valdorian who works in a gold mine. As he experiences several difficulties as he goes through life, he will question his definition of masculinity. It's with the help of the tightly knit brotherhood of colleagues in the mine that he will find the necessary support to overcome a feeling of stubborn guilt which prevents him from achieving happiness. Until the day an explosion breaks out underground. As part of the rescue mission, Maxime descends into the mine lair with the firm intention of bringing each of his colleagues back to the surface alive.

Komt Wel Goed

Komt Wel Goed is an intimate, raw and human film about two young adults who are stuck in life in completely different ways. Saar is confronted with sexism and gender equality in the workplace on a daily basis, while Mark struggles with mental problems after losing his best friend to suicide. When they unexpectedly get stuck in an elevator together, a special encounter occurs.

The Art of Self-Defense

Casey is attacked at random on the street and enlists in a local dojo led by a charismatic and mysterious Sensei in an effort to learn how to defend himself. What he uncovers is a sinister world of fraternity, violence and hypermasculinity and a woman fighting for her place in it.

Rites of Passage

A father and his two sons go on holiday together hoping to reconcile some of their differences, but when the arrival of two escaped convicts interrupts their vacation, the three men must cooperate in order to survive.

Fighting Elegy

Kiroku boards with a Roman Catholic family and falls for the daughter Michiko. He ignores his feelings, joins a gang, gets in fights and, eventually, becomes involved with the radical Kita Ikki group.

Rooster's Crow

Drowned in the chaos of a family reunion filled with testosterone and pig roast, Reynald will try to prove to his nephew, his family but mostly himself that he's still king.

La fuga

The internal journey of eight men, who, through a theater workshop, go through the different prisons they inhabit. Practicing the art of seeing themselves, in Boal's words, this group of men reflects on their masculinity as a representation to hide their true strength: their vulnerability.

Vertical Living

A couple's relationship is tested during a hapless night away in the country.

Of Night and Men

Three men from different generations are at a crossroads and must, overnight, redefine themselves to move on to the next stage of their lives.

Finn

Indy and Finn are best friends who escape into the forest to create a fantasy film filled with heroes, monsters, and wooden swords. As they immerse themselves in their imaginary world, the real world quietly encroaches, Finn is moving away, and neither boy knows how to say goodbye. Their playful filmmaking project becomes a means of clinging to a fleeting connection. Through toy knights, hand-drawn monsters, and whispered arguments, the boys wrestle with the inevitable changes that come with growing up.

Close

Two 13-year-old boys spend an idyllic summer together, but their connection is put to the test when they become the subject of speculation at school.

ANIMA

Two young writers in the task of writing a screenplay about a bullfighter, question his relationship with the bulls. This leads them to discuss masculinity and what a man is.

Dirty Laundry

A day in the life of the boss' right hand man (Daniel Kors) drifting through life one job at a time.

TOGA SA METRO

A tailor named Ricardo, a classic Filipino film enthusiast, embraces these toxic masculine ideas, cultures, and behaviors from the films he watches. His wife Linda and their worker Jun will soon face the consequences of these behaviors.

West of Greatness: The Story of the Westwego Muscle Boys

In a fading Louisiana town, Jerome dreams of Hollywood while Terry seeks escape from a troubled home. United by desperation, they train for a high-stakes bodybuilding competition that becomes their shot at something more. Filmed over 18 months, WEST OF GREATNESS blazes a bold new trail in cinematic storytelling, blending raw documentary with scripted drama. It's a haunting, human story of ambition, survival, and the quiet bond that forms when there's nothing left to lose.

Harun

To save his failing business, an elderly tailor must confront his deep-seated prejudice when he accepts an unusual order: creating a female cosplay costume for a young man.

Wild Youth

Wild Youth is an ode to being young. A sensitive and intimate story of the first experiences of losing one's childlike innocence, questioning the imposed "masculinity" and (re)discovering yourself in the function of others.

Work It Out

A young man eats alone at an LA cevicheria, processing his relationships, grief and questionable behaviours over a phone call.

Days Without

After a chaotic episode with his wife, Russian-Estonian worker Nikolai is left alone with their one year old daughter, Sophia. As time goes by, he begins to doubt his abilities as a father and furthermore, if he will ever see his wife again.

The Doll Boy

A mother and her son have left the marital home. The mother entrusts her son Jacques to a friend for the day. This is an opportunity for the little boy to play with Julie. But Jacques has a secret: he loves playing with dolls.

Found

Marty is the ideal fifth grader—he gets good grades, listens to his teachers and doesn't start trouble in class. But a darkness is beginning to fall over Marty's life, the kids at school won't stop picking on him, his parents just don't seem to understand him, and now Marty must grapple with a terrible secret that threatens to destroy life as he knows it—his big brother is a serial killer.

Selfhood

Selfhood follows 5 individuals and the difference between their sense of self compared to how they present theirselves to the outside world.

Fireflies

Ramin flees from persecution in Iran and ends up living in the limbo of exile, far from everything he knows, in the tropical port town of Veracruz, Mexico. There his nostalgia and melancholy are confronted with new friendships, while he starts to rediscover his own desires.

Robby

Shipwrecked on a tropical island, a young boy befriends an abandoned native youth, forcing him to reevaluate societal prejudice about race, religion and nudity.

Moonlight

The tender, heartbreaking story of a young man’s struggle to find himself, told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love, while grappling with his own sexuality.

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.

Bondi Boy

Radhesh, a high school student in Sydney’s affluent Bondi, betrays close relationships and his own self worth in order to claw his way up the social ladder.

Soft

A teenager struggles with his identity after an unresolved family relationship.

OFF DUTY

It's an ordinary winter's day when disillusioned Police Inspector Azaad Singh is tasked with delivering a very important file to his superior. Traversing expanses of rural and urban Punjab along the way, he reckons with the state's past and present realities, and faces an untimely existential crisis as a result.

Balloon

In the brutal battlefield of junior high, Sam has always tried to stay below radar — but all that changes when he discovers he has super powers.

Water

Camilo, an adolescent rower on a Xochimilco jetty, has his first sexual encounter with another man. One day he thinks he is being discovered by Beto, a colleague from work. When confronted, Camilo accidentally ends up revealing his homosexuality. Not knowing what to do, Camilo reacts violently and decides to flee Xochimilco.

Close Quarters

Manuel and Lupe want to have a baby. When Manuel discovers he is infertile, he starts to fall apart both physically and emotionally. After exploring several options, Manuel turns to Rubén, his new friend, to act as their donor.

Starred Up

19-year-old Eric, arrogant and ultra-violent, is prematurely transferred to the same adult prison facility as his estranged father. As his explosive temper quickly finds him enemies in both prison authorities and fellow inmates — and his already volatile relationship with his father is pushed past breaking point — Eric is approached by a volunteer psychotherapist, who runs an anger management group for prisoners. Torn between gang politics, prison corruption, and a glimmer of something better, Eric finds himself in a fight for his own life, unsure if his own father is there to protect him or join in punishing him.

Black Daruma

All filmed from the warped perspective of a doll, Black Daruma is a dark-humoured psychological horror film about an unemployed man who buys a Japanese 'luck doll' to improve his fortunes, only for his life to unravel in disturbing ways.

The Bikeriders

After a chance encounter, headstrong Kathy is drawn to Benny, member of Midwestern motorcycle club the Vandals. As the club transforms into a dangerous underworld of violence, Benny must choose between Kathy and his loyalty to the club.

Waking Up in Vegas

Yael is at the beginning of puberty and is searching for his own identity between his virile big brother and his queer best friend Aaron. In the process, he not only questions himself, but also endangers his friendship with Aaron.

The Wound

Eastern Cape, South Africa. A lonely factory worker, Xolani, takes time off his job to assist during an annual Xhosa circumcision initiation into manhood. In a remote mountain camp that is off limits to women, young men, painted in white ochre, recuperate as they learn the masculine codes of their culture. In this environment of machismo and aggression, Xolani cares for a defiant initiate from Johannesburg, Kwanda, who quickly learns Xolani's best kept secret, that he is in love with another man.

Alpha Male

Five men meet on a self-development course run by a charismatic coach who promises to mend their relationship with their partners. The controversial methods of a self-proclaimed specialist turn their lives upside down, leading to a series of hilarious, sometimes blood-curdling consequences.

Panchos

Plot unavailable

Young, Fragile

At times of changing gender roles, a tinder date encourages young Leonid to live his own definition of "masculinity". A current reflection on love, sexuality and role models.