

From the cliffs of the Isle of Wight to an abandoned swimming pool in Lambeth, Boys On Film 8: Cruel Britannia presents an eclectic mix of ten UK-set short films including: Harry Wootliff's "I Don't Care" starring Iwan Rheon; Ben Peters's "Downing" starring Jamie Brotherston and Ross William Wild; David Andrew Ward's "All Over Brazil" starring Iain De Caestecker, Frank Gallagher, and Gemma Morrison; David Leon and Marcus McSweeney's "Man and Boy" starring Eddie Marsan, Geoff Bell, and Eddie Webber; Aleem Khan's "Diana" starring Neeraj Singh; Jason Bradbury's "We Once Were Tide" starring Alexander Scott, Tristan Bernays, and Mandy Aldridge; Hong Khaou's "Spring" starring Chris O'Donnell and Jonathan Keane; Sybil H. Mair's "The Chef's Letter" starring Jonathan Firth, Ray Fearon, and Layke Anderson; Faryal's "What You Looking At?!" starring Rez Kabir, Michael Twaits, and Hussina Raja; and Dominic Leclerc's "Nightswimming" starring Harry Eden, Linzey Cocker, and Tim Dantay.
Fleur (segment "I Don't Care")
Chloe (segment "Downing")
Lauren (segment "Downing")
6.0Avery (Jones) returns to college as a competitive swimmer after getting his life back on track. But his life takes another unexpected turn when he and his two friends (Bonds, Casseus) are wrongly accused of murder and end up in prison.
6.7When household tensions and a sense of worthlessness overcome Evan, he finds escape when he clings with the orphans of a throw-away society. The runaways hold on to each other like a family until a tragedy tears them apart.
6.1Twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray are raised in east London, under the influence of their hateful but doting mother Violet. As they grow up, Ronnie's violent nature takes over, and Reggie follows his brother's lead. The two become notorious crime lords who rule over the East End club scene. But at the height of their power, the brothers veer into different lives, giving the older crime bosses a chance to reclaim what the Krays took from them.
5.9It’s 2006, YouTube is in its infancy, and internet porn is still behind a paywall. Taking the stage name Brent Corrigan, a fresh-faced, wannabe adult video performer is molded into a star by Stephen, a closeted gay porn mogul who runs the skin flick empire Cobra Video from his seemingly ordinary suburban home.
6.8A Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and risks friendship, heartbreak, and family in a desperate search for sexual expression.
6.5Set in the dark and old Parramatta prison built by the original convicts our lead character Ray a war veteran finds himself serving 18 months for manslaughter after defending his fiance. He soon realizes that the prison boss has it in for him and does everything possible to break Ray even going after his fiance.
6.2Based on the writer/director's childhood, FARMING tells the story of a young Nigerian boy, 'farmed out' by his parents to a white British family in the hope of a better future. Instead, he becomes the feared leader of a white skinhead gang.
6.2A former youth boxing champion, Jimmy McCabe is a man in search of hope but looking in all the wrong places. When he hits rock bottom he turns to his childhood boxing club and the only family he has left: gym owner Bill corner man Eddie and promoter Joe. Back in training, years after anyone thought he was a contender, he risks his life, as he tries to stand tall and regain his place in the world.
6.2After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.
6.6In this story inspired by real characters, three girls from America, Nigeria and India are trafficked through an elaborate global network and enslaved in a Texas brothel, and must together attempt a daring escape to reclaim their freedom.
7.3Fired from a strip club, a vengeful dancer masterminds a high-stakes heist with fellow strippers to take down the corrupt boss and the men who underestimate them.
6.3In the fall of 1994, a teacher at Chicago's run-down Steinmetz High conspires with the school's academic decathlon team to cheat on an academic competition.
6.7When the young, attractive Joe Orton meets the older, more introverted Kenneth Halliwell at drama school, he befriends the kindred spirit and they start an affair. As Orton becomes more comfortable with his sexuality and starts to find success with his writing, Halliwell becomes increasingly alienated and jealous, ultimately tapping into a dangerous rage.
6.1After Faye and her psychotic boyfriend, Vince, successfully rob a mob courier, Faye decides to abscond with the loot. She heads to Reno, where she hires feckless private investigator Jack Andrews to help fake her death. He pulls the scheme off and sets up Faye with a new identity, only to have her skip out on him without paying. Jack follows her to Vegas and learns he's not the only one after her. Vince has discovered that she's still alive.
7.4A young transgender man explores his gender identity and searches for love in rural Nebraska.
6.1Fresh out of prison, a former debt collector working for a gangland boss is told he has a terminal brain tumour. In an attempt to atone for his past he rescues a young girl from trafficking, forcing him into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with his boss.
6.0Vice detective Bob Hightower finds his ex-wife murdered and daughter kidnapped by a cult. Frustrated by the botched official investigations, he quits the force and infiltrates the cult to hunt down the leader with the help of the cult’s only female victim escapee, Case Hardin.
7.119-year-old Eric, arrogant and ultra-violent, is prematurely transferred to the same adult prison facility as his estranged father. As his explosive temper quickly finds him enemies in both prison authorities and fellow inmates — and his already volatile relationship with his father is pushed past breaking point — Eric is approached by a volunteer psychotherapist, who runs an anger management group for prisoners. Torn between gang politics, prison corruption, and a glimmer of something better, Eric finds himself in a fight for his own life, unsure if his own father is there to protect him or join in punishing him.
5.8An ex-marine enforcer must battle his conscience and code of honor when he is forced to do things for the mob.
6.9Eyal, an Israeli Mossad agent, is given the mission to track down and kill the very old Alfred Himmelman, an ex-Nazi officer, who might still be alive. Pretending to be a tourist guide, he befriends his grandson Axel, in Israel to visit his sister Pia. The two men set out on a tour of the country, during which Axel challenges Eyal's values.
7.9When a carefree woman learns that her closeted friend is gay, the two form an inseparable bond and find comfort in each other's company.
7.3Singing and dreaming together, a talented singer-songwriter and a same-aged keyboardist add harmony and love to each other's lives.
6.9Two childhood friends are recruited for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.
7.6County Durham, England, 1984. The miners' strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green, starting a class war with the lower classes suffering. Caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot, who, after leaving his boxing club for the day, stumbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne for the royal Ballet school in London.
6.2The heterosexual man Axel is thrown out of his girlfriends home for cheating and ends up moving in with a gay man. Axel learns the advantages of living with gay men even though they are attracted to him and when his girlfriend wants him back he must make a tough decision.
7.4When an old friend brings filmmaker Enrique Goded a semi-autobiographical script chronicling their adolescence, Enrique is forced to relive his youth spent at a Catholic boarding school. Weaving through past and present, the script follows a transvestite performer who reconnects with a grade school sweetheart. Spurred on by this chance encounter, the character reflects on her childhood sexual victimization and the trauma of closeting her sexual orientation.
7.8In 1960s Wyoming, two men develop a strong emotional and sexual relationship that endures as a lifelong connection complicating their lives as they get married and start families of their own.
6.1A fantasia on the inner lives of gay teenagers in '70s France.
5.7A band of displaced untouchables in Western Ghats of India embrace Buddhism in order to escape from caste oppression.
5.3Invited by the conductor Premil Petrovic to stage Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, a musical theater work from 1912 based on the poems of Albert Giraud, LaBruce transposed a strange and tragic episode of true crime onto the composition. Complementing the original atonal score is a narrative about a trans man who is outed by his girlfriend’s father and forbidden from seeing the young woman again. Crestfallen, the protagonist decides to prove the fact of his manhood by castrating a taxi driver and then revealing his newly transplanted member to the two of them. This story, which for LaBruce “serves as a kind of allegory for all gender radicals and outcasts driven to extremes by the disapproval and hostility of the dominant order,” is rendered in a visual style that nods to the era of Schoenberg’s melodrama. LaBruce cheekily appropriates the formal vocabulary of silent cinema with black-and-white photography, irises, and intertitles like “A cock, a cock, my kingdom for a cock!”
4.2On Christmas Day, 15 year old David finds out that his boyfriend, Jonathan has taken another lover. The discovery leads him on the brink of depression making him think of ways to have him back at all cost. He has invited Jonathan to see him on this day for the last time.
6.3Szabolcs plays in a German football team, as does Bernard. They are roommates, best friends, inseparable. A lost match makes him reconsider his life and he goes back to Hungary in hope for more simplicity. Yet his solitude does not last long. Soon after his arrival he meets Áron and a mutual attraction between the two boys develops when suddenly Szabolcs receives an unexpected phone call from Bernard: he has arrived to Hungary...
8.0A tale about isolation and lack of communication, the gap between the reality a teenage boy lives, and how he would like it be. He has a secret that he would like to tell his family, something that he has come to terms with and is about to affect the rest of his life. But how will they react?
7.6Following the tragic death of her teenage son, Manuela travels from Madrid to Barcelona in an attempt to contact the long-estranged father the boy never knew. She reunites with an old friend, an outspoken transgender sex worker, and befriends a troubled actress and a pregnant, HIV-positive nun.
0.0It's Tonio's first time in Corsica. He wanders across the island and on dating apps until stumbling upon the Oracle, a user who tells him about gay life in Corsica. Their conversation is reenacted with an actor who seems to connect deeply with the Oracle's story.
6.0Alexander, the King of Macedonia, leads his legions against the giant Persian Empire. After defeating the Persians, he leads his army across the then known world, venturing farther than any westerner had ever gone, all the way to India.
3.3The Best of Boys in Love is a wildly diverse collection of films that mixes styles, settings, and stories ranging from "elegant gay romance" (Frontiers), to a musical send-up of Hollywood, to an "exquisite period piece" (Village Voice) set in New Zealand. The DVD features seven audience favorites selected from our collection of award-winning gay short films.
5.6Brotherly love goes too far when Feng gets his twin sister pregnant while both of them are still in high school, creating a problem that's bigger than both of them. Convincing his gay friend Le Le to take the blame seems like the best option.
5.2Three loosely related stories about love, loneliness and desire, held together by one central event (a train accident) that sets these characters in motion. Andrew Lin Hoi is a mainland tour guide who’s stranded in China when the accident happens. He was supposed to pick up his visiting girlfriend Gigi Lai, but instead he gets stuck in a hotel where a Category 3 film is being filmed. There he strikes up a quick connection with the leading lady, who offers him a role in a graphic love scene with her. Meanwhile, Gigi has arrived in HK only to find herself alone with no one to turn to. Depressed and despondent, she takes comfort in the attentions of a lonely older man played by Patrick Tse Yin. The third and most interesting affair occurs between taxi driver Ben Ng and mainland hustler Wong Hei. The two hook up outside the train station and fight and fume in between steamy couplings.
