Every fall I bug him about themes he sees emerging organically in his festival. This time, Out on Film executive director Jim Farmer beat me to the punch.
“This year, we have themes of family — and of families you find,” he says. The 36th anniversary of the film festival is a mix of international and local screenings peppered with several filmmakers attending and talking about their work. What Farmer says is true: A lot of the films here chart the delicate dance between generations and of straight parents interacting with their LGBTQ children — and sometimes vice-versa.
Spanning 11 days, the festival starts tomorrow with the opening night screening of the tearjerker Our Son, starring out actors Billy Porter and Luke Evans as a couple whose divorce leads to a custody battle over their child.
“It’s very emotional,” Farmer says. “What surprised me about it is that, a lot of times when you see custody films they automatically lean to one side or the other.”
Our Son, by contrast, lets us see both of the dueling husbands with all their strengths and weaknesses. “It was very realistic, but very painful,” Farmer says. The film’s director, and co-writer, Bill Oliver, is scheduled to attend the screening.
Like film festivals everywhere, Out on Film had to pause, adapt, then get back on track when COVID reconfigured the world. “It has taken everybody awhile,” Farmer says. “We did the 2021 festival, but some people were still just hesitant. Last year, I worked my butt off to get Bros for opening night, but it was worth it. We were excited to have a real festival again, and that was our best crowd ever.” Among its highlights, the festival presented actor Colman Domingo its Icon Award. He’ll soon be seen playing openly gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, in director George C. Wolfe’s biopic Rustin.
Out On Film has built on last year’s momentum, offering a mini-festival of movies in the spring, via a grant from Atlanta Pride. It was named Number 1 of the nation’s top 10 film festivals this year by USA Today. “We’re kind of on a roll — knock on wood,” Farmer says. (For the record, the festival edged out its older sister, the Atlanta Film Festival, which came in at Number 4 on the list.)
If the pandemic dammed up the film production pipeline for a time, there’s no evidence of that now, given Out on Film’s abundance of strong work from around the globe. “The initial films I watched this year were Big Boys and Lie with Me,” Farmer says, naming two strong yet very different features from the United States and France, respectively. “I completely related to that kid [in Big Boys] and what he was going through, and I was very captivated by the romance of Lie with Me.”
Farmer also name-checks the French juvenile detention drama-romance Lost Boys, and the U.S. documentary Chasing Chasing Amy. “I was really taken in by the backstory of the filming of Chasing Amy [the 1997 Kevin Smith film the documentary celebrates], and everything that was going on at the time with Harvey Weinstein.” Another documentary he notes is Jewelle: A Just Vision about author-activist Jewelle Gomez, who will attend the festival.
Out on Film always has good local representation, but this year’s is a boom crop. “We had well over 100 Georgia filmmakers trying to get in,” Farmer says. Usually, the festival has one block of Georgia and Atlanta works. This year, there are two: Atlanta LBGTQ Film Celebration and Homegrown Shorts.
“Our shorts program is always strong because we’re Oscar-qualifying [in the Best Drama Short category],” Farmer says. But the festival includes a number of short documentaries as well. He mentions The Dancer. “That began as a story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It’s about a very famous Black dancer who went from being very acclaimed to living on the streets and eventually being murdered.” (It wasn’t one of the films I got to preview, but Dancer was co-directed by my former colleague Ryon Horne.)
Out on Film also features a fairly recent subgenre, LGBTQ- themed horror films. “Fright Night” is a bill of shorts designed to get the goosebumps going. Farmer also mentions the feature-length thriller Healed, about a celebrity lesbian couple invited to a meditation retreat that isn’t what it appears to be. Queer filmmaker Guinevere Turner, whose onscreen insight enlivens Chasing Chasing Amy, is one of the cast members.
Going back to recurring themes, one kept coming up for me as I watched 11 of this year’s films in advance. Several of the dramas concern the early years of coming out — and of young gay men sometimes having to feign romantic interest with women in ways that quickly backfire. It’s the same story that’s been told for decades. While these films are made with a quality and assurance that older ones lacked, it’s depressing that the world hasn’t changed enough, and this familiar tale remains so central. Maybe that’s just testament to the ongoing need for festivals like Out on Film.
Most of the festival’s screenings happen at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema. A few are at other venues, including Out Front Theatre Company, RoleCall Theatre and House of Hope Atlanta, so double-check the schedule when making plans.
Here are quick takes on the titles I previewed, in alphabetical order.
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Big Boys. Writer-director Corey Sherman’s coming-of-age comedy can make many a gay man cringe in recognition, and I mean that as high praise. Jamie (played by the winning Isaac Krasner) is a chubby teen looking forward to the annual camping trip he and his girl-crazy brother Will (Taj Cross; the two boys have great, prickly rapport) take with their now-adult cousin Allie (Dora Madison). Jamie’s bummed that Allie’s bringing her new boyfriend, Dan (David Johnson III).
But his animosity quickly turns into a thick boy crush. The budding young gourmand starts quizzing Dan on his preferred spice blends for the hamburgers they plan to grill. He also proposes extending a hike in the woods with Dan, long after Will and Allie head back to their tents. And he fantasizes about returning to the park as a grown man and having hookups with fellow bears. A key scene in Sherman’s film comes when Jamie admits his attraction to Dan with a bravery many of us lacked at his age. Dan’s kind response might be the stuff of wishful thinking, but it ends Big Boys on a warm glow.
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Chasing Chasing Amy. The director started shooting this title as Savannah Rodgers, but comes out by movie’s end identifying as a man named Sav. That’s one of many transitions in a film whose formal shagginess turns out to be a strength. The documentary begins as a love letter to Kevin Smith’s 1997 dramedy Chasing Amy, about a guy (Ben Affleck) crushing on a lesbian friend (Joey Lauren Adams). As a suburban teenager, the movie’s portrait of sexual fluidity made Rodgers feel seen. Chasing Chasing Amy gives Smith’s film needed context through generous hang time with Smith himself and from interviews with people like filmmaker Guinevere Turner.
A pal (and crush object) of Smith’s, Turner recalls watching the Clerks writer-director draw on elements from their own friendship and his offscreen romance with Adams while making his movie. For film lovers of any kind, the documentary demonstrates how movies we love can spark different responses in us when revisited over time. The documentary’s strongest sequence comes near the end, when Adams grants Sav an interview more emotionally loaded than the young filmmaker probably expected.
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Elephant. Bartek (Jan Hrynkiewicz) lives alone with his mom on a failing horse farm in the middle of nowhere. Not much happens except binge drinking at the dive bar where Bartek works, and the pervasive homophobia infamous in his country of Poland. Both the booze and the bias get kicked up in his village when one of the locals drinks himself to death, and the man’s estranged musician son Dawid (Pawel Tomaszewski) returns after 15 years.
“He has done awful things,” Bartek’s mom warns, which is exactly what Bartek is looking for. Soon, the two young men are hooking up. And Bartek has to decide if his loyalties to local life outweigh a chance of happiness elsewhere. Like Norwegian Dream, previewed below, Elephant nicely captures the secret afterglow the protagonist feels after the men’s hookup. And it memorably captures the stark loveliness of the Polish autumn countryside.
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Golden Delicious. Take it as a dis and a compliment both, but this teen drama plays like an updated ABC Afterschool Special, with all the niceness you’d expect from its production country of Canada. The comparison continues with the initial focus, young Asian-Canadian student Jake’s (Cardi Wong) relationship with his dad George (Ryan Mah), who tries to recapture his own high school glory by drilling his son in basketball.
Meanwhile, Jake’s longtime girlfriend Valerie (Parmiss Sehat) is tired of his deferral of losing their virginity together. Soon enough, Jake is hanging out with new neighbor Aleks (Chris Carson), who’s aiming to make the school’s basketball team alongside Jake — and who’s also openly gay. Aleks has no problem sexually taunting the biggest homophobe in the locker room: “Methinks the jock doth protest too much.” Predictably, Jake and Aleks start engaging in some extramural sports on their own.
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Lie with Me. Some people dream about going back in triumph to the home towns they felt didn’t appreciate them. That fantasy is fulfilled in this French film, but no matter how much Stéphane Belcourt (Guillaume de Tonquédec) is photographed and feted when he returns to his idyllic village, a vein of melancholy runs through his visit. It was here, as a book-smart teen, that he fell in love with classmate Thomas (Julien De Saint Jean), a tough farm kid who catches Stéphane looking at him and initiates a rough, steamy relationship. Young Stéphane (nicely played by Jérémy Gillet) has plans for the future, but Thomas can’t see beyond his family’s expectations.
Ironically, this long-ago tryst is the source of Stéphane’s first novel, leading to the fame that brought him home. Invited to write a memoir to celebrate his town’s cognac distillery, Stéphane is chaperoned by (wouldn’t you know it) Thomas’s grown son, Lucas (Victor Belmondo). And whither Thomas? Well, that’s the story Lie with Me tells via poignant flashbacks. Though it remains an uphill challenge to make a writer’s work look interesting onscreen, Lie with Me makes a good attempt. The movie is small but deep, smart and wistful.
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The Lost Boys. Julien De Saint Jean, co-star of the previous film, returns here as William, another conflicted young lover. He’s one of the teens in a French facility for juveniles interned for behavioral or family problems. The film’s main focus is on Joe (Khalil Garbia), who is coming up on a hearing that could lead to his release. But he has a problem with spontaneously running away and contending with general anti-Arab prejudice.
Then new kid William, rumored to have stabbed somebody, is admitted to the lockdown. The boys start a tentative romance, trying to obey the rules inside while dreaming about life beyond its locked doors. Director and co-writer Zeno Graton maintains a taut balance between the tough and the tender in his film, finding star-crossed poetry in the boys’ hard-won moments of freedom and connection (a radio broadcast shared through a cell wall, a shirtless run in the rain).
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Mutt. This day-in-the-life (and two stressful nights) drama about a transexual man adjusting to life post-transition is strong at showing the confusions that come from blowing up labels and redefining yourself. There’s a lot of collateral — well, if not damage, exactly, then adjustment. Take, for instance, when post-op Feña (Lio Mehiel) sees a familiar face at the bar. It’s John (Cole Doman), newly back in town to care for his ill mom. Also? He used to be Feña’s boyfriend, when Feña was Fernanda.
Writer-director Vic Lungulov-Klotz’s film captures the street-level daily grind of life in New York City. But as Feña sometimes abrasively asserts her identity to innocent bystanders like bodega workers and bank tellers, he comes off as abrasive. You can’t disagree with John when he tells Feña, “People don’t hate you because you’re trans; people hate you because you’re a [bleep] asshole.” At its best, Mutt dramatizes the difficulty, and necessity, of acceptance and forgiveness, no matter who you are and how you identify in the world.
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Norwegian Dream. As in Elephant, Poland comes in for a drubbing for homophobia, if from a distance. Hubert Milkowski plays 19-year-old Polish boy Robert, newly arrived to work at a fish processing factory in Norway. He’s welcomed by colleagues in the group dorm, But his presence, like that of other migrant workers, is starting to cause tension from locals who already feel squeezed by a tough job and limited opportunities. Most of the abuse, though, goes toward young coworker Ivar (Karl Bekele Steinland). He’s Black, for one thing, as well as effeminate, and worst of all, he’s the adopted son of the factory’s boss.
Dream spends much of its time on Robert and Ivar’s secret burgeoning romance. Like Elephant, the film nicely captures the giddy, secret afterglow a young lover feels the day after a night of good “taboo” sex. But the focus also shifts to the growing call for workers to strike for better conditions, putting both Robert and Ivar in awkward positions.
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Our Son. Out on Film’s opening night feature could be called a gay Kramer vs. Kramer. It delivers heartache, social issues and a little glitz in equal measure. Queer actors Luke Evans and Billy Porter play Nicky and Gabriel, a New York dream couple married for 13 years, raising 8-year-old son Owen. Being a dad is Gabriel’s main focus. For Nicky, it’s just one of the accouterments of having it all.
Director Bill Oliver and writer Peter Nickowitz’s film demonstrates that just because LGBTQ folks can have marriage and legal families now doesn’t mean everyone wants to. The movie is generous to both of its main characters, showing us their strengths and flaws, and giving each of the actors a nice, sexy scene with new romantic partners. Though a grittier take on the story might be more realistic, the sophisticated sheen of the Manhattan locale and the good-looking leads deliver the sort of middlebrow family drama the LGBTQ community doesn’t get to enjoy very often.
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Pornomelancholia. Come for the skin, stay for the loneliness. Really, that’s a recommendation. In this full-frontal drama from Argentinian director Manuel Abramovich, Lalo Santos plays a Mexican man who has a day job, but also spends a lot of time stripping for his smart phone and posting pics of himself as a “sex influencer.” He gets a lot of likes and followers, and soon he’s learning the ropes on a porn set, dressing up as Mexican hero Emiliano Zapata, getting it on with other hombres in and out of historical costumes, and learning the just-a-job ins and outs of sex work onscreen.
The film demystifies porn and DIY sex sites like OnlyFans with no judgment. But as we follow Lalo — usually alone, making cautious calls to his mom back home, or checking in at the clinic to keep tabs on his viral load — Pornomelancholia builds a quiet mood of the sort of loneliness that comes with an age when we can film our every waking moment but feel endlessly alone.
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Silver Haze. An outlier from the male-centric focus of the other films, writer-director Sacha Polak’s British drama isn’t a fun sit, but it’s a fascinating, fragmented slice of working-class, sexually fluid life. Vicky Knight plays Franky, a nurse with a chip on her shoulder largely because of burns that cover her body due to a fire when she was a kid.
The woman who set the blaze, her mother’s former best friend, is now married to the father who abandoned Franky and her sister Leah (Vicky’s real-life sister Charlotte Knight). Yeah, that tracks. Both sisters have problematic boyfriends. So it almost looks like a silver lining when Franky gets involved with a girl she meets at work, Florence (Esme Creed-Miles, lookalike daughter of Samantha Morton).
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Steve Murray is an award-winning journalist and playwright who has covered the arts as a reporter and critic for many years. Catch up to Steve’s previous streaming columns here.
