By Miruna Tiberiu
GagaOOLala is a Taiwan-based streaming service which aims to bring together queer stories of all genres from around the world. As the first LGBT-focused media platform in Asia, GagaOOLala curates feature films, shorts, documentaries, and series from the past few years, as well as producing its own original content. This month, Miruna Tiberiu is back with more recommendations of the freshest queer cinema out there.
The Forest Ends at the Sea (2023), dir. Ciao Cha
Ciao Cha’s romantic short film reveals each chapter of a love story over the course of 10 years. Two girls meet by chance on a hike amidst the luscious hills one fateful day. One is still a university student who spends every free second reading comic books; the other has her entire career planned out in her head. As the pair take the bus back into town together, they play the song which would come to accompany their relationship at each step. They edge closer, first with a head laid gently on the other’s shoulder, then with a beer and a shared night that never ends. The pair’s love story twists and turns between the past with its rose-tinted fragments of memory and the present which begins to show cracks forming in the lovers’ future. Set to the soundtrack of Taiwanese folk band Theseus, the film honours the ways in which music can be associated with others, with our love for them as well as the pain they cause us. The band’s song punctuates each crescendo of the pair’s love story, becoming embroiled in each of the ten years of their lives that we follow. The Forest Ends at the Sea is a meditation on youth, companionship, and the means by which people come together and leave each other’s lives. It shows that love is not always strong enough to combat practicality, weaving a portrait of a love story that is as gut-wrenchingly real as it is exhilarating.
Watch The Forest Ends at the Sea here.
A Drowning Man (2017), dir. Mahdi Fleifel
Mahdi Fleifel’s Cannes-selected short film delivers the sobering tale of a young Palestinian refugee, mysteriously credited as The Kid, as he navigates an overwhelming Greek city in search for the basic necessities to survive the day. His pleading to acquaintances for enough money to afford a kebab and cigarettes – he hasn’t eaten since yesterday – are cast to one side, forcing The Kid to unwillingly revert to less-than-pleasant means of securing enough food for the day. Amidst the blaring sirens and muffled conversations picked up by the constantly-mobile camera, The Kid gets swallowed up by this strange metropole. He becomes invisible only until he encounters those who see in him a service to fulfil; then he morphs into the object of another’s advantage. A Drowning Man is a harrowing tale of individualism in the face of another’s suffering, a film rendered all-the-more necessary in today’s increasingly-divisive world. The Kid stands for all those who want nothing more than to survive in the West; the film offers them all a heroic edge, an extended arm of visibility.
Watch A Drowning Man here.
Molt (2018), dir. Nathalie Álvarez Mesén
This queer coming-of-age tale plunges us into the summer heat in the rural depths of Appalachia. We feel the languid boredom brought by the blazing sun as we follow twelve-year-old Cadie and her neighbour Sarah entering the world in search for their day’s entertainment. The pair get creative; Sarah suggests that they should carry out a witchcraft ritual to bind their friendship to the status of ‘Blood Brothers’. To the texture of dirt softened by spit and the agonising anticipation of a first kiss where time, too, seems to melt in the heat, the film explores girlhood amidst all the questions that the first queer feeling gives birth to in a teenager’s mind. The film’s lens does not leave the girls’ side; we see everything – the boys, the danger, the excitement which does not yet have a name, and the way in which the arid landscape morphs into a fairytale setting where everything is possible – through Cadie’s and Sarah’ eyes. Molt is a languid film that ends with a jolt, a film which is sure to remind us of when we, too, felt things for the first time.
Watch Molt here.
If you liked the sound of these, check out more of what is on offer on GagaOOLala!
Miruna Tiberiu is the Editor-in-Chief of GAY45. She is an MPhil student at Cambridge University. Tiberiu has written for numerous publications, including The Cambridge Review of Books, and the Cambridge Language Collective. She is the co-founder and co-editor of University of Cambridge’s first all-queer magazine, Screeve. She was nominated for the International News Media Association (INMA)’s “30 Under 30” Awards in 2023.
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