Chinese Characters

Trailblazing artists, activists, and everyday people from across the spectrum of gender and sexuality defy social norms and dare to live unconventional lives in this kaleidoscopic view of LGBTQ+ culture in contemporary Japan.

A queer femme dominatrix huffs a magic aerosol can and develops the ability to speak to the dead.

Sex is power, and Waseem, a Syrian gay-for-pay hustler seeking asylum in Cologne, wields it like a shield. Keeping his johns at an emotional arm’s length while satisfying their most carnal desires in order to eke out a living, he meets his match in Lars: a kind, affluent professional with a growing personal interest in Waseem. This gripping tale of transactional identity explores the tactical exchange of trust and intimacy in a partnership, and the divisions between immigrants and their host countries in contemporary Europe.

The fourth volume of an amazing series, Male Shorts: International V4 features six brand-new short films focusing on men. The 6 short films are: Venus in Nykes [Vênus de Nyke] (2021); The Red Trinket [O Berloque Vermelho] (2021); Ten Times Love (2020); It's Just in My Head [È solo nella mia testa] (2020); Playtime [Giochi] (2021); It Is Not the Brazilian Homosexuals Who Are Perverse, But the Situation in Which They Live [Nicht die brasilianischen Homosexuellen sind pervers, sondern die Situation in der sie leben] (2021).

Tonoin Kei, a musical genius, becomes the new conductor of Fujimi, clashing with the group's leader, Morimura Yuuki, who is unaware of Kei's feelings for him.

Shots fired inside a club frequented by black Brazilians in the outskirts of Brasilia leave two men wounded. A third man arrives from the future in order to investigate the incident and prove that the fault lies in the repressive society.

A film crew in search of a new documentary project determines to find a wrongfully imprisoned death-row inmate. Enter Chauncey Ledbetter, a quirky and potentially gay prisoner convicted of murdering his high school show choir teacher. As filming of the documentary progresses, evidence increases that Chauncey might be guilty after all.

There is a live house beloved by music lovers, where musicians of various genres take to the stage day and night. However, the owner Kohei has decided to close the venue soon. "Why are you quitting?" "Because I got bored." "What are you going to do if you quit?" "A trip around the world," Kohei lies. In reality, Kohei's body is being eaten away by illness and he doesn't have much time left. One night, when Kohei closes up shop and goes outside, a young man with an injury suddenly jumps out in front of him. Sensing that there must be some reason, Kohei invites this man called Hiroto in and treats him. The next morning, Kohei urges Hiroto to go to the hospital. But Hiroto refuses and tries to leave but collapses in pain. Kohei doesn't ask anything and decides to let Hiroto stay for a while. An unfinished music sheet in Kohei's hands was written by Makoto, Kohei's former lover. He wants to perform this song for the final stage of Pink Triangle.

After her estranged brother's sudden death, young wife Lucia bonds with his fiancée through their shared grief and finds herself falling in love.

Over a single summer day in New York, the lives of two mothers briefly entwine. Julia, a writer and mother, is unsettled by creative stagnation, unprocessed grief, and the approach of her daughter’s adolescence. An unexpected encounter with Taylor—a labor and delivery nurse in the midst of a postpartum crisis—pushes Julia to reconsider the life she has built, and whether she can rediscover herself within it.

Following his son Gabriel’s death, Jorge travels from conservative Bolivia to New York City to confront Gabriel’s boyfriend Sebastian. While the two battle over Jorge’s inability to accept his son, Sebastian channels his grief into a bold new play in honor of his lost love, in which Gabriel’s inner turmoil is transformed into an eye-popping gay fantasia.

The 30-year legacy of the murder of black teenager Yusuf Hawkins by a group of young white men in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, as his family and friends reflect on the tragedy and the subsequent fight for justice that inspired and divided New York City.

The daughter of a man on death row falls in love with a woman on the opposing side of her family's political cause.

Three ages, three places, and three different ways of understanding cruising in Barcelona. Three individuals on a quest. A beach at dawn, shopping centre bathrooms in the afternoon and the woods at nightfall. Playful gazing, time spent waiting or the quest for something that may never come. Their first time, their idea of sex and their own way of seeing cruising. Told through their eyes and in first-person perspective.

Kazuo Hara follows Ayumi Yasutomi, a transgender candidate, who is also a Tokyo University professor, as she embarks on a national campaign for a seat in Japan's Upper House.

'Guacho' narrates a summer day in the life of two teenage friends, Maikol and Darío, who want to escape their everyday crushing reality, at least for a day. They spend up to the last penny to get to the mountains where, taking refuge in tranquility and mutual love, they manage to get a grasp of happiness. But freedom does not seem to be so available to them.

In 1973, when Frank Bledsoe and his 18-year-old niece Beth take a road trip from Manhattan to Creekville, South Carolina for the family patriarch's funeral, they're unexpectedly joined by Frank's lover Walid.

As a sci-fi obsessed woman living in near isolation, Beverly Glenn-Copeland wrote and self-released Keyboard Fantasies in Huntsville, Ontario back in 1986. Recorded in an Atari-powered home-studio, the cassette featured seven tracks of a curious folk-electronica hybrid, a sound realized far before its time. Three decades on, the musician – now Glenn Copeland – began to receive emails from people across the world, thanking him for the music they’d recently discovered.

Both original and incredibly romantic, Redwoods tells the story of an already-partnered man whose love is tested when a mysterious drifter passes through his small Northern California town.

Koji Nanjo, a young rock star, falls in love with soccer player Takuto Izumi. Koji eventually learns that Izumi's mother killed his father out of severe and intense love. Izumi took all the guilt for his father's murder and refuses to go pro because of fear that his past will be discovered by the media. Izumi detests Koji's company and encouragement and severely dislikes the attention from the press, but Koji cannot stay away for he soon realizes that his love for Izumi is very similar to the love that Izumi's mother felt for his father.