GAY☆CINEMA 2021

17-year-old Paul likes strange things: stealth trails and abandoned buildings, whispered conversations and left-behind bags. Besides that, he seems to be a young man without qualities. His mysterious nature catches the eyes of his classmate Dala and his art-loving teacher Mr. Bulwer, both seemingly driven by hidden desires. Then a boy's dead body is discovered in the forest.

Janik and Samuel are very close. After high school, they plan to go to Turkey in search of Samuel's father, whose name they only know. However, shortly before their departure, Janik makes a mistake that calls everything into question.

Strap yourself in for an exhilarating journey into darkness with these five award-winning short films from across the globe that delve into heart-pumping escapades varying from the intensely erotic to the ultra-violent to the warm-inside feels. The night has never looked so inviting.

-BOYS ON FILM 21 invites you on a voyage of emotion-soaked self-discovery, where same-sex attraction is celebrated, first loves are tenderly formulated, and beautiful secrets burn and bloom.

A former Greek diving champion and an eccentric German student take an adventurous road-trip of rediscovery from Bari to Bavaria.

It's Tonio's first time in Corsica. He wanders across the island and on dating apps until stumbling upon the Oracle, a user who tells him about gay life in Corsica. Their conversation is reenacted with an actor who seems to connect deeply with the Oracle's story.

A workaholic big-city fashion journalist is sent to a Christmas obsessed town to dig up a story.

An LGBT-themed horror film set in a rural town in the Philippines. A remote village is gripped with fear. Its residents are missing one by one. Now a young nurse is in town to care for an ailing Don Filipo. Will he be the next victim?

Love in a Concentration Camp.

Embark on a journey through celluloid from 1985 to present day in these freshly digitized cinematic pearls from around the world that explore an array of gay encounters from years gone by.

A look at the life and ideas of Pauli Murray, a non-binary Black lawyer, activist and poet who influenced both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall.

Desperate to avoid his family's judgment about his perpetual single status, Peter convinces his best friend Nick to join him for the holidays and pretend that they're now in a relationship.

Harold, a middle-aged Mexican theatre acting coach, travels to New York and finds himself obsessing over a precocious teenage boy named Felix, who he believes is the reincarnation of his first childhood love.

Drowning in debt, child support and bills all while white knuckling it through sobriety, Francis is coming undone. When his roommate, Shelly, goes missing, Francis is thrown headlong into her private world; a slip stream of money, violence and terrifying allegiances. As secrets are exposed and tensions mount, a search for Shelly devolves into striving for meaning in the face of oblivion.

A hoodlum and his gay brother rob a construction firm to fund their guardian's medication.

Harry has been partying for 48 hours when he meets Johannes on the dance floor of a club in Berlin. With 15 hours until his flight home, Johannes offers to help him print his boarding pass. This mundane task leads to a day together wandering the city. The contrasts in their lives and values force each one to confront their own truths. Boys Meet Boys is a feature length mumblecore about the journey of a brief encounter: the mark left by a fleeting moment of joy.

Cássio is a young transgender person undergoing hormone therapy and determined to have a conversation with their elderly father about it, when the COVID-19 pandemic derails their plans. Amidst social isolation, a lockdown inside a small apartment, a virtual social life, and a severe political crisis in his country, Cássio tries to build up the courage to follow through with the plan. Living and recording this context becomes an attempt to bring these two people together.

Follows the illustrator J.C. Leyendecker, whose legacy laid the foundation for today's out-and-proud LGBTQ advertisements.

As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 looms near, William Basinski contemplates the enduring legacy of "The Disintegration Loops" (his elegy to the 2001 Attacks), while quarantined in the midst of COVID-19. All of the interviews are shot on Zoom, interspersed with dramatically eerie shots of an almost empty NYC at the outset of the pandemic, and loaded with amazing archival footage of William growing up and becoming the true visionary he was always meant to be.

A children's entertainer falls from grace when NSFW content of him circulates online.

In the early 1970s, Argentine homosexuals were arrested and tortured by the police or in institutions for the mentally ill.

It follows an angst-ridden father, Santiago, whose emotional crisis is exacerbated by a complex and intense relationship with his teenage daughter who seeks to break free from him.

A man look back over his life as he grapples with a painful secret he has keep hidden for 20 years, one that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and his soon to be husband.

Gamers turned lovers Cairo and Gavreel spend time together a few weeks before Cairo returns to his province. Their relationship is tested as they have to deal with distance, the pandemic, fate and circumstance.

Xavier and Mico join a writing camp, where they get to know each other more. But with their friends and other people around them twist and turn them in different directions, will they be strangers no more or strangers again?