As is the norm, NewFest36—the 36th Annual New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival— boasted a varied, diverse and eclectic array of films for audiences to enjoy, dissect and discuss. Here are some of the films I was able to see and that I (mostly) recommend seeking out. Some will be released in the coming months and into 2025—many, too many, are still seeing distribution.
Young Hearts
Belgian helmer Anthony Schatteman, in his promising feature debut, perfectly captures the excitement, confusion and desire felt by post-adolescents struggling to come to terms with their sexual orientation in a world that still sees same-sex love as alien and taboo in Young Hearts. When typical teen Elias (terrific newcomer Lou Goossens) meets new neighbor Alexander (Marius De Saeger), he’s awash in awkward feelings he doesn’t quite understand. Alexander is more than comfortable with his attraction to boys. Elias is not. The film, reminiscent of Heartstopper but grittier, takes its time to tell this sensitive love story. And there’s a hilarious subplot involving Elias’s dad (Geert Van Rampelberg), an egotistical, surging pop star. De Saeger already has movie star swagger and shows tremendous promise.
Lilies Not For Me
One of the most affecting yet disturbing films at NewFest36 is Will Seefried’s first feature, Lilies Not For Me. Based on historical events and set shortly after the first world war, the movie exposes a shocking and heinous practice that was used back then to cure male homosexuals.
Owen (Fionn O’Shea) is a gay novelist, living in a remote cottage, who doesn’t see his attraction to men as an affliction. His schoolboy crush Philip (Robert Aramayo) arrives and attempts to convince him that they are sick and must be fixed and he’s figured out the way to do it, via an appalling medical procedure. The movie is then energized and complicated by the dynamic presence of rising star Louis Hofmann (The Forger, All the Light We Cannot See) as Charlie, a young married man who unashamedly loves men. The narrative, then, takes a truly dark turn. These sequences are crosscut with Owen’s current institutionalized scenes where he’s conveying the story to an understanding nurse (Erin Kellyman).
Lilies look is reminiscent the cinema of Merchant Ivory, especially Maurice, but Seefried’s tonal and genre shifts are jarring leaving the viewer feeling as traumatized as the onscreen characters—but, perhaps, that’s exactly the point.
High Tide (U.S. Centerpiece)
Marco Calvani’s lovely, evocative feature debut, High Tide, is a meditation on loneliness, longing, love, alienation, communication and self-acceptance. Set in Provincetown (and showcasing that locale in all its abrasive glory) the narrative focuses on a Brasilian immigrant trying figure out his place in the queer world and the world in general. Marco Pigossi, in a stunning English-language lead debut, anchors the film and delivers a mesmerizing performance. High Tide is currently in theaters.
Duino
Out Argentinian actor Juan Pablo Di Pace (The Mattachine Family, Mamma Mia!) co-writes, directs and stars in Duino, a bittersweet look at memory and unrequited love and how those past feelings can forever haunt a person–but also how through art, catharsis can be achieved. Di Pace plays Matías, a vexed filmmaker fixated on his autobiographical movie’s ending. Matías must exorcise past demons before he can finish his work.
The film flashes back to when he was at college in Duino, an Italian village. There he met and became infatuated with Alexander (a seductive Oscar Morgan), an irresistible Swiss student. But nothing carnal ever happens between the boys and Alexander is soon expelled, although the two do spend a Christmas together with Alexander’s family.
Duino is an enchanting work linking past and present through murky memories and unfulfilled fantasies. In the end, sometimes in art, reality can be altered to achieve that elusive narrative once so desperately longed for.
Bird (International Centerpiece)
Celebrated filmmaker Andrea Arnold (American Honey, Cow, Fish Tank) has crafted a rather frustrating but often-entrancing new work with Bird, starring Nykiya Adams as Bailey, an alienated 12-year-old who befriends the bizarre, free- spirit titular character played by Franz Rogowski (Great Freedom, Passages) with his usual captivating beguilement. Barry Keoghan (Saltburn, Banshees of Inisherin) is wonderful as Bailey’s over-enthusiastic and colorful dad, although the role is too small. The film is meant to be a poetic, socially aware, magical realism look at teen angst and imagination. More often than not, though, it breeds bewilderment.
LIZA: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story (New York Centerpiece Screening)
In LIZA: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, filmmaker Bruce David Klein delves into the extraordinary career of Liza Minnelli as well as her troubled personal life. Minnelli discusses living in the shadow of her superstar mother as well as her devotion to her father, Oscar-winning director, Vincente Minnelli. The doc is a must for all Liza fans but doesn’t focus enough on her less popular (but worthy) films like Lucky Lady and Arthur and a lot of her significant stage work is given short shrift.
Out
Amsterdam-based filmmaker Dennis Alink has crafted a gorgeously shot (in black and white) meditation on queer identity, longing and desire with his feature, Out. Tom (Bas Keizer) and Ajani (Jefferson Yaw-Frempong Manson) live in a small town in the Netherlands. Both are accepted to film school, in Amsterdam, and they find themselves on divergent paths. Ajani is an extrovert, eager to explore the sex and drug-drenched queer scene. Tom is a bit antisocial and more focused on his filmmaking —and wanting to be exclusive with Ajani.
While the film presents a number of bonding scenes, I never quite felt both boys were mad for each other. It was obvious Tom crushed hard on Ajani, whose increasing aloofness simply made his character appear superficial. And in a discomfiting scene in an after-hours club late in the film, Ajani’s actions (or inaction) towards Tom being violated paint him as borderline horrific. Yet Alink and his co-writer Thomas van den Gronde, gloss over the event, allowing for no accountability. Is it a deliberately provocative statement about our current queer youth? Possibly.
The reason to see (endure) Out is charismatic newcomer Keizer who mesmerizes in every frame he’s in. The camera adores him, and his face registers the kind of emotional complexity and nuance sometimes missing from the screenplay. Keizer is another exciting young talent to watch.
I Don’t Understand You
The first half of David Craig and Brian Crano’s horror comedy I Don’t Understand You is delightful and deranged. Andrew Rannells and Nick Kroll star as a quarrelsome queer couple who go on a trip to Italy to reconnect with each other while awaiting news on the birth of their adoptive child. As they encounter a number of Italian locals, the narrative spirals into a dark and bloody abyss–and so does the film which devolves into an insipid and unbelievably offensive mess. The moral of the morass seems to be that two gay men can murder as many innocent Italians as they want and get away with it because it was all a misunderstanding. I have no issue with gays being portrayed as monstrous, especially in black comedies. But I do take issue with Italian characters being presented as silly and expendable. And a karmic reckoning would have made the stomach-churning body count almost forgivable. Almost.
