XPosed: Shorts 5 - Prayers for the Future

Language: OmeU

Aliens in Beirut (Raghed Charabaty)
ALIENS IN BEIRUT blurs reality and fiction, exploring alienation and desire at home. The film recreates life in the fateful summer of the 2020 Beirut Port Explosion as a Lebanese immigrant in Canada returns to Beirut in search of roots, only to fall for a stranger by the sea. Told through romance and fraught family ties, the film appears to be about queerness in Lebanon but shifts into a story of survival. In the end, the explosion cares for nobody – leaving behind snippets of unerasable desire.

Degenere (Sara J. Asprilla Palomino)
Doroty’s dream was to perform on stage, dance in a skirt and be recognized as the woman she was, but death came before she fulfilled it. Her best friend Misael, a 60 year old gay man, will make it happen. Together with LGBTIQ+ youth, Misael forms the first diverse folk dance group in his city, questioning their traditions that are defended by cultural values in order to erase their queerness.

Será Inmortal Quien Merezca Serlo (Nay Mendl)
Sergio, Ubaldo, Yolexquys and Winston belong to different generations and share a collective historical memory: being part of the Cuban gay community. Between experiences of discrimination and celebration, they recall memories of the early years of the Revolution where the LGBT+ community was sent to concentration camps. Now and together, they evoke the power of being who they are.

Oración para acompañar la muerte (Elyla)
Nicaraguan artist Elyla, infiltrates the patriarchal-heteronormative cockfighting scene to research how to transmute collective pain through communitary healing rituals.

Hold Me Close (Aurora Brachman, LaTajh Simmons-Weaver)
HOLD ME CLOSE explores the unique power and complexity of the relationship between two Queer Black womxn, Corinne and Tiana. Utilizing audio the couple self-recorded every day over the course of a season, Corinne & Tiana experience cycles of life’s joys and pains together in the home they share. Depicted through elegantly composed tableaus of domestic scenes of the couple shot on super 16mm film, paired with searingly intimate documentary audio of the womxn from life within their home, the film bears witness to the distinct constitution of their love.