Burl's

The Male Gaze is a new series of releases from New Queer Visions that showcases short LGBTQ films from across the world. The first instalment, First Kiss, brings together five shorts that are based around men experiencing romantic and/or sexual interaction with other men for the first time. It takes in films from Sweden, Indonesia, USA, Australia and France giving a rounded look at how similar experiences are depicted across the world. The films are: Naked [Naken] (2013); Pria (2017); Walk With Me (2018), One Night Only (2018); Michel's Mouse [Tapette] (2016).

It's a classic case of opposite attraction: Handsome Ben Bennet is a gay, affluent, stylish attorney at the top of the genteel social set in southern Virginia, while Lee Darcy is a rough-hewn welder with a secret that he nightly tries to blot out with an excess of liquor.

Europe, 1940. For thousands of Jews, a Japanese diplomat and his wife defy Tokyo and the Nazis, and offer visas, for life.

The two brothers Teis and Nico find a poster from "Gone with the Wind" and they start talking about why people kiss and the techniques behind it. Later they meet Giinjha and she invites them to her birthday-party. While they are preparing to go to the party they rehearse how to kiss in the way the poster suggested because Teis has announced that he is in love with Giinjha and will kiss her even though he is not comfortable about it.

(A) Torsion is a 2002 Bosnian short film directed by Stefan Arsenijevic. A singing group, trying to escape war-torn Sarajevo, has to wait for a tunnel to clear. While they wait, a cow has difficulty giving birth because of the "torsion" affecting its calf (i.e., it's in a twisted position inside). Fortunately, one of the choir members has some veterinary training, and with help from the chorus to drown out the sounds of war, the cow gives birth. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.

"The Hours" is the story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.

After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims, and he begins to use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife.

In the beginning of the 19th century, Johannes Elias Alder is born in a small village in the Austrian mountains. While growing up he is considered strange by the other villagers and discovers his love of music, especially rebuilding and playing the organ at the village church. After experiencing an "acoustic wonder", his eye color changes and he can hear even the most subtle sounds.

Based on the true story of would-be Brooklyn bank robbers John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile. Sonny and Sal attempt a bank heist which quickly turns sour and escalates into a hostage situation and stand-off with the police. As Sonny's motives for the robbery are slowly revealed and things become more complicated, the heist turns into a media circus.

Trisha, a Filipino transgender woman, suddenly dies while being crowned in a beauty pageant. Her last wish was to be presented as a different celebrity on each night of her wake, but her conservative father wants to bury her as a man.

Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. Opportunity knocks in the form of a wealthy U.S. shipbuilder who hires Tom to travel to Italy to bring back his playboy son, Dickie. Ripley worms his way into the idyllic lives of Dickie and his girlfriend, plunging into a daring scheme of duplicity, lies and murder.

Léto, a young trans and gay man, lives in a small, social housing apartment near Tours. During the day, he kills boredom on his phone from the ticket booth of a movie theater on its last legs. But where he's looking for feelings, he's only offered sex. So at night, he flees disillusionment by heading for the stars. The roof of his high-rise building is like his moped: a refuge, an escape. However, one morning, the parking lot of an ice rink becomes the setting for a life-changing encounter when he comes face to face with Hamza, a solitary employee with an enigmatic charm. The emotional disturbance is immediate. With all due respect to the scoundrels!

Andreas and Alessandro are two friends who have known each other since their childhood. Now that they have grown up, they study at University in different cities but they always spend the summer together in the place where they were born: a seaside resort that regularly fills up with tourists every year.

Patricia Highsmith's haunting story of a day in a young girl's life when a kind stranger comes to town.

The horror of Jen's teenage past catches up with her when she takes her autistic son to a birthday party in her hometown.

Flow

In the south of Tunisia, two football fan brothers bump into a donkey lost in the middle of the desert on the border of Algeria. Strangely, the animal wears headphones over its ears.

Twin brothers Leon and Noel share their parents, their school and their bunk bed. But when Leon becomes interested in Abi and Abi becomes interested in Noel, a love triangle threatens to tear the twins apart - until Noel makes a declaration of his own.

As every year Carlos is spending the summer in the country with his family in order to help out with things. Perhaps he won't even be returning to Madrid, as economic prospects are hardly rosy there. In addition, his father's health is failing and he needs Carlos to help. In this town, where the elders still celebrate the medieval rites, Carlos meets a young policeman Juan and they fall in love. A friendship ensues amidst age-old rituals and a crisis of a nation, all this set against a spectacular backdrop which seems somehow not of this world.

Inspired by true events, Todd Verow’s Tumbledown is an explosive cocktail- an emotional rollercoaster ride through the dark sides of sexuality. A complicated love triangle develops after hunky Jay meets bartender Nick and invites him to spend the weekend with him and his partner in their country cabin. Soon, copious amounts of sex, drugs and alcohol lead to a dark obsession and even darker complications. Always bold and never less than riveting, Tumbledown is sure to leave you breathless.