Outside The Safehouse (India) Journey of Jai who is drawn to Bharatnatyam. His family throws him out but with the right teacher, he learns and becomes sensation. Over his journey he finds love with another man but jealousy soon creeps in and he faces heartbreak when love conflicts with his art. The film highlights resilience, identity, and the unjust societal pressures faced by the LGBTQ community. This film is based on the choices, the voids, and the struggles that the LGBTQ community has to go through on a daily basis. My Quarantine Diary (India) This film depicts a psychological journey of a 37 year old protagonist, a successful designer who returns during the peak of Covid 19 pandemic to his hometown in Assam, India from Paris. He plans to unite and live with his longtime lover. But, following the pandemic regulations, he had to stay confined in a hotel room for days where he recalls their previous conversations and slowly enters into a delusional phase. The film shows how the powe...
This one falls into that darker corner of gay cinema. There was real potential buried in here, but the execution feels so flat that at points it plays out more like a filmed stage play than an actual movie. It's a dark psychological drama built around a street hustler confessing to a brutal, confusing murder of his own lover. Black and white flashback sequences do a solid job laying out the details of what happened, but the real focus stays on the dialogue and the writing itself. Right at the start, a young hustler has already killed his male lover Claude. Three days go by before he calls the police to turn himself in for the murder. But instead of just reporting it somewhere ordinary, he actually summons the police and the local press directly into a judge's private chambers. Yves has keys to the place, which tracks given what he does for a living, but having the press waiting right outside makes the whole scene look like some elaborate blackmail scheme against the judge. The ...