gayness

BOYS tells the story of Sieger, a sporty, rather quiet 15-year-old boy who discovers love during the summer holidays. Sieger is training in the new athletics team for the national relay championships and meets the intriguing and unpredictable Marc. The friendship that develops seems nothing out of the ordinary, but Sieger secretly harbours stronger feelings for Marc. He engages in a lonely struggle with himself when it emerges that Marc is also in love with him. With his best friend Stef, Sieger discovers a motocross track outside the village. Events soon take on a momentum of their own as Sieger quickly becomes involved with Jessica. At last, he counts for something in the eyes of his tough older brother Eddy, who is secretly using the track to tear around on a moped. Sieger keeps quiet about this to his father, who often clashes with the rebellious Eddy since their mother's death. Sieger tries to make peace between the two, but his mind is elsewhere, as he finds it increasingly difficult to deny his feelings for Marc.

At the age of 14 years, the world around you changes at a dizzying speed. But what if actually it's you that is changing? What if these changes take you away from what up until now, has been your world? Ibrahim and Rafa are going to suffer these changes for themselves, experiencing first love in a way they never could have imagined. And having to keep it Hidden away.

Franky Winter has long been best friends with his high school classmate, Ballas Kohl, much like their parents, Carly and Ray Winter and Angie and Nic Kohl, have been friends. Ray though is now the odd person out since the recent divorce when he realized he was in love with a man, his current partner Brendan. Franky and Ballas are among the popular group of students, and are on the school swim team together, Ballas being the team captain. While Ballas has just started a sexual relationship with Jessica, Franky in turn could have his choice of any girl - at least according to the scuttlebutt provided to him by his friend Mouse, a boy trapped in a girl's body, from what she overhears in the girls' washroom. But Franky has chosen to date Cil (Priscilla), they planning to have their first sexual encounter the night of his seventeenth birthday party. Franky's first was almost Ballas' younger sister, Tash, who has just returned to school following "the incident" for which she is now labeled a slut and she is now sneaking alcohol to cope. When Franky and Cil's planned post-party sexual encounter falls through at the last minute, Franky and Ballas end up having a drunken bros' night out after the party, which leads to the start of a sexual encounter between the two of them. Word of this encounter begins to circulate among their classmates. Franky is painted as the gay one and is shunned by his so-called friends, including Cil and Ballas, because of it. In the process, Franky not only has to address his own sexual feelings in their entirety, but also the homophobia he displays against his father, with whom Franky chooses not to have much of a relationship.

What do you dream of when you're 16 years old and in a seaside resort in Normandy in the 1980s? A best friend? A lifelong teen pact? Scooting off on adventures on a boat or a motorbike? Living life at breakneck speed? No. You dream of death. Because you can't get a bigger kick than dying. And that's why you save it till the very end. The summer holidays are just beginning, and this story recounts how Alexis grew into himself.

Lorenzo is a quiet teenager who lives with his parents and his younger brother in small city in the Argentinean Patagonia. One day, a family friend's son named Caíto moves south and settles in at Lorenzo's home. His family is going through difficult times and can't give much care to him. Caíto is very shy and hardly speaks. Lorenzo is supposed to help him feel at home. They become friends. They spend great amounts of time together. Although Lorenzo doesn't like sports, he puts up with Caíto's fascination for mountain biking. They share deep conversations too. They can be very different but they come to understand each other. It won't be long until everybody at home realizes Caíto is a difficult case. After a couple of days, Lorenzo's parents feel they've had enough. But then, Caíto makes a big confession to Lorenzo. He tells him the true reason why he was forced to leave his house. After that, Lorenzo takes charge of him so that his parents let him stay. He now has a secret to hold, a responsibility to take and a troublesome partner that will take him through new life experiences.

15 year old Tom is going to spend another calm summer with his parents and younger sister at their summer house. But by fate, another family comes to spend some time with them, with their 17 year old son Felix.

Having moved to Paris for university, Leevi returns to his native Finland for the summer to help his estranged father renovate the family lake house so it can be sold. Tareq, a recent asylum seeker from Syria, has been hired to help with the work, and when Leevi's father has to return to town on business, the two young men establish a connection and spend a few days discovering one another during the Finnish midsummer.

The 18-year-old Andrej is sent to a youth detention centre due to problematic behaviour. There, he meets Zeljko, the informal leader of the detainees. Upon discovering Andrej's secret, Zeljko soon begins to take advantage of him; Andrej's sense of responsibility and moral integrity are put to a trial. Ultimately, he must choose between Zeljko and his reckless lifestyle and staying true to himself.

Generally absent French army rescue helicopter pilot Nathan Delille's teen son Damien Delille is the model student in his Alpine village school. He takes self-defense lessons from veteran neighbor Paolo, needed as non-provoking victim of class bully Thomas Chardoul, doting adopted son of petty cattle farmers Jacques and Christine Chardoul. Unaware and questioning that Damien is the innocent party when the principal, who guessed right, thus punishes both as fighters, his mother, local Dr. Marianne Delille, takes Thomas in after diagnosing his mother pregnant. The boys are forced to play friends, fight in secret, yet bond over confidences as closet gay Damien's grades slip due to a crush on Tom, who takes over a class champion thanks to home tutoring. They are separated as their now irrelevant fights come out, yet reunite intimately after a family tragedy.

Boys (Jonas) is a mystery told in two separate timelines. In the first, it's 1997 and Jonas is entering 9th grade. A new boy in school immediately catches his eye. Perhaps it's the bad-boy scar on his cheek or his devil-may-care attitude, but Jonas is smitten. The two boys quickly become friends and before long are skipping class to kiss in an empty gymnasium. In the film's other timeline, it's 2015 and the excitement of a teenager in love has been replaced with the sorrow of a man who can't escape the past. The adult version of Jonas (Félix Maritaud, outstanding in this year's sexually graphic Sauvage and last year's ImageOut favorite BPM) is a broken man. His boyfriend has thrown him out for cheating on him a few too many times, and he's been arrested for getting into a fight at Boys, a local gay bar. There's something about the bar that seems to set him off. He meanders through life still carrying that same old Game Boy, trying to fill a hole that can't be filled. So what happened to turn this innocent teenager into the sad, angry man that we see now? Boys (Jonas) is an engrossing mystery that will keep you guessing from the first minute to the last. As it moves back and forth between its two timelines, the film succeeds as both a sweet coming-of-age love story and a dark suspense thriller. As these two perfectly-told stories intertwine, it makes for a totally unique and truly special cinematic experience. -- Stephen K. Weisenreder

After a summer spent with his his best friend Kat to escape his family, Phil goes back to school and starts to question his feelings towards Nicholas, a new classmate.

Matias and Jeronimo have known each other since childhood, but their friendship took a new turn during the holiday before starting high school when they both sexually awoke together. Matias's father indirectly broke up their relationship by accepting a job very far away. More than ten years later, Matias returns to his old town for carnival with his girlfriend and unexpectedly runs into Jeronimo. Feelings will slowly reappear and will reach a climax, but at what price?

Gewoon Vrienden (Just Friends) is a romantic comedy. The tough Joris doesn't come loose from his mother who is addicted to plastic surgery. Medical student Yad has snorted too much of various drugs and returns to his strict mother. Yad works as a domestic help for the grandmother of Joris. There they meet and they fall in love immediately, but before they can surrender to their love, they first have to balance things with their mothers.

Victor is a twenty-something ex-diving champion now working in a furniture factory and living with his sick grandmother in a seaside town in Greece. Distraught after her death, he decides to dust off her old car and travel to Germany to visit his estranged mother. On the ferry to Italy, he meets Matthias, a talkative, inquisitive young German who is on his way home. Matthias persuades Victor to take him along and as they drive north, Victor's uptight, repressive personality clashes with the more free-spirited Matthias. But they soon find common emotional ground as their summer road trip takes unexpected turns. A tender story of self-discovery, love and family, in its many forms.

Tim and John fell in love while teenagers at their all-boys high school. John was captain of the rugby team, Tim an aspiring actor playing a minor part in Romeo and Juliet. Their romance endured for 15 years to laugh in the face of everything life threw at it - the separations, the discrimination, the temptations, the jealousies and the losses - until the only problem that love can't solve tried to destroy them.

In his final year in the Political Science program at college in Chicago, Sam Basilli is still recovering from the breakup with his last boyfriend, Malcolm, that breakup which resulted in him not only losing his lover but his best friend. Sam, not the type for one night stands, still vows never to date a friend to avoid such double blows. With regard to relationships, Sam's best female friend since first year, Stasia Cooper, conversely never considers herself to have a boyfriend regardless of what the outside world sees in she not believing in commitment. On the Valentine's weekend, Sam reluctantly agrees, as a favor to friends, to what he considers his worst nightmare in giving Harry Turpin a ride - nine hours - to their hometown, Harry, also a student at the same college, who tormented Sam all through high school for being gay. While Sam's initial impression of Harry is still the same - self-absorbed, adolescent minded, the type of guy that strings girlfriends along until it becomes too messy for him - it isn't until midway through their trip that Sam views Harry in a slightly different light on an admission: that Harry had long ago come out as being pansexual. That discovery at least leads to them having a more fulsome discussion about their lives on the remainder of the drive. With bumps along the way over the next few years, Sam and Harry teeter on the brink of friendship to being in that same vein of friend for Sam that Malcolm was and Stasia still is. As Sam develops even deeper feelings, he has to decide if he will break his vow not to date friends. In the end, generally controlled Sam may be taken over by emotions, both good and bad.

Two men meet in Barcelona and after spending a day together they realize that they have already met twenty years ago.

Young Swiss soccer player Mario has devoted his entire life to fulfilling his and his fathers dream of becoming an international professional soccer star. All this changes when his club recruits a rising star from Germany Leon Saldo. Now as pressure increases, he is forced to choose between love and happiness and his dreams of success and stardom, a choice that might hunt him until the end of his life.