Mates

These five award-winning coming of age short films offer a glimpse of how boys and young men tackle life's difficult desires: confronting one's demons, understanding sexual relationships, gaining the respect of one's father, or simply running away from it all. This is only the start of their complex formative years, where not every question has an answer, and not every answer makes sense. The short films are: Boys [Pojkarna] (2015); Ioana (2015); Kiem Holijanda (2017); Picnic [Piknik] (2015); Tomer & Elias [Tomer en Elias] (2016).

Alban lives in a ski resort with his mother. Each night, the teenager slips away to meet up with Julien – this boy who curiously has the same name as the hero of the novel Alban is devouring.

After chatting to a guy online, Jamie makes the bold step to meet up with him in person.

When Ella was twelve, she had her first fight. And when she was twelve, she discovered sex. Now eighteen, Ella reflects on how her obsession with her older brother Michael's best friend Moses left her with a secret she still carries.

Bull Jackson is a bouncer in a gay bar where Jordan performs as a drag queen by night and is a medical student by day. When Coco, their mentor and owner of the club, is shot in what appears to be a random homophobic attack, Bull and Jordan form an unlikely team to find those responsible.

Fragile in Love is an experimental short that rebels against the suppression of electronic music culture and gay house parties.

Caleb, a South Florida teen, loves his camera, his weed and his grandmother. On the eve of his high school graduation, everything changes when he's exposed to HIV. While he waits three months for his results, Caleb finds love in the most unlikely of places.

Wonderkid follows the inner turmoil of an unnamed football prodigy as he comes to terms with his own identity, struggling to reconcile his sexuality with his issues with alcohol and OCD.

15-year-old Beni falls in love with Fögi, a singer in a Rock band. As Fögi seduces him, he is only willing to follow him where ever Fögi wants to. But Fögi is a drug addict and pulls Beni deeper and deeper into the hell of drug addiction.

STRANGER is a coming-of-age short film that focuses on two neighbors reconciling before one of them goes off to college in Chicago. It is based on a true event that occurred the last day that I was in town before I moved to college. The two characters, Max and Cass, discuss their past together after not talking for years, realizing that they have changed as young adults and miss hanging out but cannot because Cass is leaving while Max stays in town to fix cars. With this last interaction, they get to say goodbye officially on a good note.

To emerge from anonymity, a young man assumes responsibility for a crime he did not commit.

In November 1918, a few days before the Armistice, when Lieutenant Pradelle orders a senseless attack, he causes a useless disaster; but his outrageous act also binds the lives of two soldiers who have nothing more in common than the battlefield: Édouard saves Albert, although at a high cost. They become companions in misfortune who will attempt to survive in a changing world. Pradelle, in his own way, does the same.

When Gabriel and Emilie meet by chance, he offers her a ride, and they spend the evening talking, laughing and getting along famously. At the end of the night, Emilie declines Gabriel's offer of "a kiss without consequences". Emilie admonishes him that the kiss could have unexpected consequences, and tells him a story, unfolding in flashbacks, about the impossibility of indulging your desires without affecting someone else's life.

A young London businessman is seduced by a corporate entity.

Craig and Smokey are two guys in Los Angeles hanging out on their porch on a Friday afternoon, smoking and drinking, looking for something to do.

Four inconsequential young people and a dream at stake... in an attempt to better understand the steps that followed a tragedy, stories are told and memories are revisited: dive headfirst into the chaotic universe of the band Vicious Resonance.

The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.

At Pacific Palisades High, a poor Latino falls hard for a troubled girl from the affluent neighborhood.

The son of a wealthy businesswoman returns home from boarding school. His mother, always busy with business and with her ambitious lover, realizes that her son suffers for being a homosexual. Having killed a teacher who abused him, the trauma makes him keep killing.

Joseph learns that his son and his companion have just perished in an accident. They were expecting a child via a surrogate mother in Belgium. What will become of their future baby? Is Joseph the legitimate grandfather? Carried by the promise of this birth which will prolong the existence of his son, the sexagenarian goes to meet the young Flemish woman with a fierce and indomitable character.