
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. Segments: After Dawn [Passée l'aube] (2017), Poof (2018), Spiral (2018), Night of Love (2018), Floating Melon [浮果] (2015).
6.1Benjamin, a rising star filmmaker, is on the brink of premiering his difficult second film No Self at the London Film Festival when Billie, his hard drinking publicist, introduces him to a mesmeric French musician called Noah.
6.3In post-9/11 New York City, an eclectic group of citizens find their lives entangled, personally, romantically, and sexually, at Shortbus, an underground Brooklyn salon infamous for its blend of art, music, politics, and carnality.
7.5Four tales unfold in Wes Anderson's anthology of short films adapted from Roald Dahl's beloved stories, "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar", "The Swan", "The Rat Catcher", and "Poison."
6.4Colin, a timid gay man, is swept off his feet when Ray, an enigmatic and impossibly handsome biker, takes him on as his submissive in a crazy and erotic BDSM-focused relationship.
7.3After a drunken house party with his straight mates, Russell heads out to a gay club. Just before closing time he picks up Glen but what's expected to be just a one-night stand becomes something else, something special.
6.6Alex Truelove is on a quest to lose his virginity, an event eagerly awaited by his patient girlfriend and cheered on with welcome advice by his rowdy friends. But Alex, a super gregarious dude, is oddly unmotivated. A magical house party throws Alex into the presence of Elliot, a hunky college guy, who pegs Alex as gay and flirts hard. Alex is taken aback but after a series of setbacks on the girlfriend front he takes the plunge and learns some interesting new facts about himself.
6.1Three years after Mike bowed out of the stripper life at the top of his game, he and the remaining Kings of Tampa hit the road to Myrtle Beach to put on one last blow-out performance.
6.4Fourteen-year-old Mo is a lonely, sensitive boy whose hunger for the rant and banter of buddies makes him prone to tread dangerous territories. He idolizes his handsome older brother, Rashid, a charismatic, well-respected member of a local gang, whose drug dealing enables “Rash” to provide for his family. Aching to be seen as a tough guy himself, Mo takes a job that unlocks a fateful turn of events and forces the brothers to confront their inner demons. It turns out that hate is easy. It is love and understanding that take real courage.
6.8At a birthday party in 1968 New York, a surprise guest and a drunken game leave seven gay friends reckoning with unspoken feelings and buried truths.
7.0Struggling to find his place at Oxford University, student Oliver Quick finds himself drawn into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton, who invites him to Saltburn, his eccentric family's sprawling estate, for a summer never to be forgotten.
7.6In the late 1990s, the arrival of elderly invalid Patrick into Marion and Tom’s home triggers the exploration of seismic events from 40 years previous: the passionate relationship between Tom and Patrick at a time when homosexuality was illegal.
6.3A gifted young dancer arrives in New York City and joins the downtown contemporary dance world. With talent to burn, he soon must choose between his responsibility to his broken family in the Midwest, and forging a life and career for himself.
6.6Gay, alienated Los Angeles teens have a hard time as their parents kick them out of their homes, they don’t have money, their lovers cheat, and they are harassed by gay-bashers.
6.2This intimate drama follows Rebecca, a woman who has kept her sexuality a secret from her friends but chooses to reveal it to a stranger. While Rebecca's revelations may not yield the results she expects, a perfect ending is still in reach.
6.6A suicidal young man is committed to a Dublin psychiatric hospital where he meets new friends who greatly influence his life.
6.5Despite being well into adulthood, brothers Doug and Steve Butabi still live at home and work in the flower shop owned by their dad. They exist only to hit on women at discos, though they're routinely unsuccessful until a chance run-in with Richard Grieco gets them inside the swank Roxbury club. Mistaken for high rollers, they meet their dream women, Vivica and Cambi, and resolve to open a club of their own.
6.1Ready for a night of legendary partying, three college students must weigh the pros and cons of calling the police when faced with an unexpected situation.
6.1An inside look into one night in the San Francisco underground rave scene.
6.0A college student joins a group of revolutionaries to meet girls but ends up committed to their goals.
0.5Anna and Edith are colleagues at an insurance company. Their male chef uses the women's business success to his own advances. Anna's husband would prefer her to be at home. Anna and Edith become a couple, but it doesn't end with a romantic rendez-vous. Together, and with the help of their female colleagues, they want to improve their work conditions.
5.5In this sequel to Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway, Alexander's story is told in both the past and the present. Alexander's parents send him away from home for being too sensitive and not helping enough on their farm. He goes to Los Angeles in hopes of going to art school, but when he can't find a job as a minor, he turns to prostitution. After being arrested, he wants to head to Arizona to marry Dawn, but he falls into a lucrative job/relationship with a gay football star.
3.6Sympathetic look at the tragic life of cabaret singer Lorna, who was born a man but really just wants to be a woman. She meets a man who loves her but she can't tell him the truth and decides instead to get an operation so she'll be all woman.
5.1José, a fifty-year-old homosexual magician, feels the need to return to Granada, the place where he spent his childhood, perhaps to embrace the painful memory of tragic experiences, perhaps to bury it definitively.
4.4"Race d’Ep!" (which literally translates to "Breed of Faggots") was made by the “father of queer theory,” Guy Hocquenghem, in collaboration with radical queer filmmaker and provocateur Lionel Soukaz. The film traces the history of modern homosexuality through the twentieth century, from early sexology and the nudes of Baron von Gloeden to gay liberation and cruising on the streets of Paris. Influenced by the groundbreaking work of Michel Foucault on the history of sexuality and reflecting the revolutionary queer activism of its day, "Race d’Ep!" is a shockingly frank, sex-filled experimental documentary about gay culture emerging from the shadows.
6.8Jean, a PE teacher, is forced to live a double life. When a new student arrives and threatens to expose her sexuality, Jean is pushed to extreme lengths to keep her job and her integrity.
7.5At the age of 14 the world around you changes at a dizzying speed. But what if actually it's you that changing? What if these changes take you away from what up until now, has been your world? Ibrahim and Rafa are going to suffer these changes for themselves, experiencing first love in a way they never could have imagined. And having to keep it Hidden away.
7.0The story of two radically different men thrown together in a Latin American prison cell. One is Valentin, a journalist being tortured for his political beliefs. The other is Molina, a gay window-dresser who fills their lonely nights by spinning romantic fantasies drawn from memories of old movies.
3.8Hustler ERIC COYLE, 19, has secured early release from prison by informing on his drug dealer, BENNIE. He immediately begins reassembling his former life, including girlfriend, HEATHER, former pimp, DOLORES and his best john, TOMMY. Desperate to create his idea of a family, if only even for a day, he manages to trick Tommy into getting him an apartment, a used car and a job and moves Heather in with him, but things quickly spin out of control when Bennie is brought in for questioning.
0.0Kieran is making hard cash from a con he's recently developed: blackmailing married men out of a few hundred quid by claiming to be only 15 when he sleeps with them. It's not long before he ropes his boyfriend, Jamie, in for the ride but his first job goes terribly wrong. The couple are at odds and tension builds to an explosive point where Kieran confesses to having never loved Jamie to begin with. But when Kieran is arrested for a crime he did not commit and Jamie runs over to check if the police found the cash-stash, Jamie finds hidden evidence that Kieran really did care all along.
5.5A teenage boy navigates the final minutes before his first theater stage performance, which includes experiencing his first kiss. Despite his rising anxiety, he shares a romantic moment with a classmate.
3.5When Emma's cancer takes a turn for the worse, she presents her new wife Josie a deathbed order: find someone new while Emma is still around to approve of her choice.
7.2Three lonely young denizens of Taipei unknowingly share an apartment: May, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-kang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.
6.6Over the course of three days Ross, a college dropout addicted to crystal-meth, encounters a variety of oddball folks - including a stripper named Nikki and her boyfriend, the local meth producer, The Cook - but all he really wants to do is hook up with his old girlfriend, Amy.
7.2Cot is an employee of Ten's house, both have arguments, but despite Ten's strong personality, he ends up arousing feelings for Cot... how will it end?
6.5Rawang, an immigrant from Bangladesh living in awful conditions, takes pity on a Chinese man, Hsiao-kang, who is beaten up and left in the street. Rawang lovingly nurses him on a mattress he found. When he is almost healed, Hsiao-kang meets the waitress Chyi. His love for Rawang is put to the test.
6.2On 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 ...?
3.7Prometheus, on an Odyssean journey, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge in search of the characters of his imagination. After meeting the Muse, he proceeds to the "forest." There, under an apple tree, he communes with his selves, represented by celebrated personages from the New York "underground scene" who appear as modern correlatives to the figures of Greek mythology. The filmmaker, who narrates the situations with a translation of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, finds the personalities of his characters to have a timeless universality.
4.5Naked in New York begins in the car of grown up Jake, he is talking to us about his girlfriend, Joanne, and to whom you can turn to for help while facing life. From there it flashes back to his memories of his parents, college, house across from a squirrel infested peanut factory, best friend, writing career and Joanne.