Boys on Film 18: Heroes

As a brooding teenager, BOYS ON FILM is celebrating it’s (not so) sweet sixteen with an astonishing selection of the latest international gay short films. Featuring golden boys, teenage lust, self-conscious dolls, chance encounters and a vengeful creature, alongside a holiday romance and a young man’s attempt to conceal his sexuality from his mum, BOYS ON FILM 16 is our most possessive collection yet.

A tale of being different and growing up.

An electric collection of the latest, award-winning lesbian and feminist short films exploring fantasies, dreams, desires, love and transgression. Featuring chance encounters, teenage lust, girl fighters, self-conscious dolls and rampant zombies alongside journeys of self-discovery, the fight for equality and a playful take on stereotypes. GIRLS ON FILM 2: BEFORE DAWN takes you on an incredible adventure from America to Australia through Iceland, the UK and Algeria into worlds beyond.

The true story of B.: Torn between a cold relationship with K. and her feelings for another woman, shy and insecure B. is heading for a disaster. For too long she has suppressed her desire and lived a lie. But is it really too late for B. to follow her heart?

A man tries to keep pace in front of the hand of a clock, turning ever faster, until he's overtaken by time itself. PACE is an animated short film exploring our modern relationship with time and today's constant feeling of not having enough of it.

A boy experiences new desires while watching a man at an indoor swimming pool. Forced up the diving platform by a rowdy gang, he receives unexpected help. Cold Star is a mixture of short and music video. A hybrid, that connects the emotions of a short with beats and lyrics of music. The film is an appeal for acceptance of your own and others sexual identity.

I can’t move on. I wish I could. But I’m caught in the thought of what could have been, losing my grip on reality.

Elin and Jennie’s parents are separated and have an infected relationship. Depicted from the two sister’s perspective we follow them through their everyday life dealing with parental intrigues.

Several Swedish teens, ages 13-17 years old, share thoughts on life, love, entering into the adult world, future dreams, self-esteem, relationship with parents, loneliness and the need for belonging.

Niki is a child who chases butterflies through a chaotic landscape in a home-made samurai costume, and attempts to prepare for a catwalk. Niki is on a journey to find meaning, to understand a crazy world that does everything it can to get rid of anyone who doesn't fit in - an inner journey to become a human being.

Sabina has traveled from Romania to the small Swedish town Holmsund with her Roma brothers. They work in a garage and Sabina is looking for a job. Elin, born and raised in Holmsund, is in the church singing at the graduation ceremony. A summer is about to start and Sabina will get to know Elin. Together they will revolt against the old ways and find something new in each other. At the same time the society around them collapses in fear and Elin’s dad becomes insane by sorrow. Because there is a madness in the Swedish idyll.

Fia lives with her mentally ill father in a small community where it’s important not to stand out. She does everything to hide what it’s like at home. After a fight with her boyfriend at a party, she runs off, and gets a ride with Elsa, who’s not afraid of standing out at all.

Two men go to Sweden in order to escape the oppression and persecution of gay men in their country.

Mikaela has undergone vaginoplasty. One night at a bar, she meets a guy and takes him back to her place.

Sabina has travelled from Romania to Holmsund in northern Sweden to find a job with her brothers. Elin has just finished school and is enjoying the first day of the summer holidays. That evening they meet, and it's a meeting that lasts forever.

Matilda is home alone with her older brother Peter when his girlfriend Elin comes over. Elin is everything Matilda ever wanted to be. She loves the way she dresses, how she moves, her whole presence. Maybe even more than Peter…

A young man agrees to support his ex lover during an HIV test. What starts out as an awkward reunion, soon becomes something more tender. Is there still hope for reconciliation?

The second collection of this hot boys shorts series takes us deep into hidden psyches, revelations of long-held secrets, to boys boarding school for the birth of a love affair, inside an explosive internet encounter, and at the center of a teen party where infatuations quickly turn lives upside down. 1) Beyond Plain Sight 2) Like Father 3) Lost Years 4) Salt 5) Sign 6) Turn it Around

A man walks through a desert carrying a full water bottle. He fights desperately the temptation to drink the water. The question arises how the man got himself into this predicament. And what will happen if he does drink the water?

An old married couple is enjoying a quiet day together when a neighbour asks them to keep an eye on his daughter for a few hours. However they have great difficulty handling the teenager. When the daughter crosses the line, the couple is forced to take matters into their own hands.

September 1944. Two Canadian soldiers find a boy washed up on the Dutch beach. Where did he come from and can he be trusted?

In the middle of the night, a widow is terrorized by an unknown man. Just when she is about to call the police, the man claims to know more about the suicide of her husband.

A program of seven short films. Seven directors deliver films that are sensitive, hard, distressing or even passionate. Violence in Chechnya, a love story in sign language, daring photos, an aggression, a party, encounters, dramas, stories of violence or love.

While on vacation with his girlfriend, Gijs receives a phone call from his mother, that reveals her troubled mental state and their complex relationship.

A girl finds out that she has a match on a dating app with a stranger, despite swiping him to the left moments ago. She starts to fear that the man is dangerously close to her.

Mathias has decided that today is the day, that he'll let Frederik know he is in love with him. But when the time comes, is he ready to make the first move?

Friends Mathias and Frederik had a fight and now Frederik won’t reply to Mathias’ texts.

Having slept together for the first time, two teenage boys must make sense of their evolving relationship.

Worlds collide in more ways than one in this stunning collection of award winning short films. Confidence is violated, classes clash and desire is concealed, yet love still triumphs regardless of the consequences.

14-year-old Thomas moves to the city. In school he meets Mads and Emma, who are interested in him for different reasons.

A film exploring life in a traditional Javanese village through magic and puppetry.

What does space sound like? In fact, like nothing at all—sound waves can’t travel through the interplanetary void.

Another Dream, a hybrid animated documentary and VR game, brings the gripping, true love story of an Egyptian lesbian couple to life. Faced with a post-revolution backlash against the LGBTQ community, they escape Cairo to seek asylum and acceptance in the Netherlands. An accompanying installation allows audiences to reflect on what they have seen, heard, and felt in VR. Another Dream is the second installment of Queer In A Time Of Forced Migration, an animated transmedia series that follows the stories of LGBTQ refugees from Egypt, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia, and from the 2011 revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa region.

After a traumatic encounter, a young, gay Egyptian joins the LGBT rights movement. When his safety is jeopardized, he must choose whether to stay in the country he loves or seek asylum elsewhere as a refugee. HALF A LIFE is a timely story of activism and hope, set in the increasingly dangerous, oppressive, and unstable social climate of Egypt today.

Roman Ducksworth Jr., Peter Francis, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Alberta O. Jones. Four names, four cases reopened under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, implemented in 2008 to re-examine racist violent crimes from the days of the civil rights movement.

An electric collection of the latest, award-winning lesbian and feminist short films exploring fantasies, dreams, desires, love and transgression. Featuring chance encounters, teenage lust, girl fighters, self-conscious dolls and rampant zombies alongside journeys of self-discovery, the fight for equality and a playful take on stereotypes. GIRLS ON FILM 2: BEFORE DAWN takes you on an incredible adventure from America to Australia through Iceland, the UK and Algeria into worlds beyond.

A young couple not ready to expect their first baby track down a cradle, only to make a discovery that will change their family forever.

A ground-breaking anthology of twenty short films by twenty filmmakers, which together offer an alternative snapshot of the UK in the year 2020.

It's been seven years since the plane crashed. Why are Bonnie and Lloyd still searching for their parents amongst the wreckage?

The story sees a 40-something trans man recalling and reliving his first romantic entanglement.

he Moffatts are in trouble. Their sick young daughter Franny almost died in October, and, wanting to make her final days good ones, they held a fake Christmas for her. A couple of months later, as the Moffatt household wakes up on December 25th, Franny is still alive, and the rest of the family have fallen apart. Big sister Veronica has hidden the family cat in the cupboard, and spends her days searching the streets for a new family. Brother Neil has given up talking altogether, and barks like a dog at his parents who are arguing about health food. When Franny finally wakes up she announces, with a smile on her face, that today is Valentine's Day.

Nina and the other new 12-year-old girls at her English boarding school must visit the school doctor for a check-up. As they wait outside the doctor's office, wondering what will happen inside, allegiances are born, and broken.

13 year-old Nina hates her Mom, her thighs and the ill-fitting bridesmaid dress she must wear tomorrow at her mother's wedding. When her Mom has to help her out of the dress, she decides to take matters into her own hands.

Clover is finishing a veterinary course when her brother dies and she is called home to her family's struggling Somerset farm.

A group of guys in suburbia the first summer after graduation. Everything is in a flux and the future is uncertain. A film about the total panic of growing up, about needing a plan for the first time and the reluctance to follow it through.

A married, openly gay teacher in Wales faces the choice of betraying his family or his core values when his sister asks him to step back into the closet for her wedding in Turkey.

The family's mother has absolutely no problems with her son having just introduced his boyfriend to her. She only wants to give him a little well-meaning advice.

In a small town in Sweden, twenty-something Nicolas meets up with some friends for some bowling after work. In the bowing alley he sees someone whom he has not seen for a long time. A film about courage and coming to terms with the past, about chances one once had and never took, chances that, deep inside, one wishes one could have again.

Drama and documentary, acting and activism merge in an impressionistic meditation on outlawed queer life and the struggle for gay rights in the UK in the 1960s. Based on an unfilmed script about two young men being blackmailed due to their homosexuality.

A struggling Hollywood actress has a sideline, working through the night to support her dream.

Kerry is a train driver and on sick leave due to a trauma at work. While roaming the train network to make sense of her tragedy she meets a man who understands her and knows what she needs.

Daniel, a male escort, attends a lunch at which his close friend Nori introduces her new partner.

Based on a real event - A hotel, only the director, me half naked.

As BOYS ON FILM reaches the end of its teenage years, we take a look at those unique boys; Boys who will go one step further, who excite, invigorate, and always impress. Boys who break boundaries, shape their worlds and are more than what they appear to be…