Passages, one of the year’s most acclaimed gay films, is coming to DVD and Blu-ray

“PROFOUNDLY REAL” – Los Angeles Times

“SMART AND PRECISE” – The Independent

“BRACINGLY HONEST” – Time Magazine

“DESERVES TO FIND THE WIDEST AUDIENCE” – The Observer

“BRISKLY-MOVING, TURBULENT, EMPHATICALLY SEXY, DELIBERATELY EXASPERATING” – RogerEbert.com

“GENEROUSLY TENDER IN ITS BRUTALITY AND UNSPARINGLY BRUTAL IN ITS TENDERNESS” – IndieWire

“ONE OF THE BEST LOVE TRIANGLE MOVIES I’VE EVER SEEN” – Baltimore Magazine

“IT’S SEXY, SAD AND SO VERY FRENCH” – Time Out

“A WISE AND UNUSUALLY WOUNDING WORK FROM A BELOVED INDIE AUTEUR” – Hollywood Reporter

A masterful work of psychosexual intensity, the newest film from celebrated filmmaker Ira Sachs (The DeltaLove is StrangeKeep the Lights On) offers one of the director’s most cutting variations on desire and intimacy.

Co-written by author and longtime collaborator Mauricio Zacharias, Passages follows Tomas (Franz Rogowski), a mercurial German filmmaker living in Paris whose commitment to his husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw), falls short when he pursues a dalliance with a young female school teacher named Agathe (Adele Exarchopoulos).

Martin begins his own affair soon after, while Tomas swings between both relationships and unleashes a reckless succession of breakups and makeups.

With fearless performances from Rogowski, Whishaw and Exarchopoulos, Sachs crafts a cinematic rarity in which the white-hot pleasures and compulsions of a particularly dysfunctional amour fou are kept on par with ferocious honesty.

Watch the trailer for Passages below and click here to pre-order your copy. The film will be available on DVD and Blu-ray starting December 12th at TLAgay.

 

Coming Soon: Wake Up, Leonard

Part self-help nightmare and all comedy, Wake Up, Leonard follows someone failing miserably to stay on the right vibe. The film tells the story of a broken-hearted seeker with a tenuous grasp on wellness and too much faith in “the Universe.”

A feel good movie about feeling bad, we follow Leonard (Nigel DeFriez) moving into a new apartment with help from his perpetually stoned sister Orla (Kira Pearson). An out-of-work actor and overworked assistant, Leonard rushes to his boss’s house to hang Christmas decorations and receives an unexpected text from his ex that gives Leonard false hope and a little direction.

An improvised feature shot during the pandemic, Wake Up, Leonard explores themes of mental health, queer love and self-acceptance that asks… “It’s a wonderful life?”

Watch the trailer for Wake Up, Leonard below and click here to pre-order your copy. The film will be available on DVD starting November 28th at TLAgay.

 

Trailer Alert: Eismayer

In 2014, film student David Wagner stumbled across an article about Charles Eismayer in an Austrian newspaper and found himself immediately captivated by the story. The most terrifying training officer in the Austrian Armed Forces fell in love with a recruit, eventually accepting his proposal and marrying him in full dress uniform in the barracks courtyard. The seed of inspiration was planted for his first feature-length film.

Sergeant Eismayer (Gerhard Liebmann) is known and feared as the toughest training officer in the Austrian military. He is ruthless with his recruits and unwavering in his discipline, order and macho toughness. But when he starts to fall in love with Falak (Luka Dimic), a new recruit who unashamedly embraces his homosexuality, Eismayer’s closeted existence is shaken to the core.

 

To a man like Eismayer, loving another man cannot be reconciled with the understanding of what a model soldier should be. Will he choose to protect his badass tough guy image over all else, or can he follow his heart and his true desire?

Inspired by an amazing true story, Eismayer is a hard-hitting queer coming of age love story with a modern military backdrop.

Watch the trailer for Eismayer below and click here to pre-order your copy. The film will be available on DVD starting October 17th at TLAgay.

 

A new restoration version of the 1989 queer classic Coming Out is coming soon to Blu-ray!

The multi-award winning 1989 film Coming Out brings the sexual awakening of a school teacher to the fore – a young man in the throes of an identity crisis which gradually leads into a slow burn acceptance.

Passionate and dedicated teacher Philipp Klarmann (Matthias Freihof) is at the beginning of his career at a new school, and when he literally crashes into fellow teacher Tanja (Dagmar Manzel) the two develop a relationship, landing them in a commitment to marry. However, this union doesn’t seem to fit Philipp who wrestles with his same sex attraction and keen interest in cruising gay bars where he meets the seductive Matthias (Dirk Kummer), who Philipp instantly falls in love with right after their first sexual encounter.

What soon follows is Philipp’s journey into self-discovery and truth telling, where everyone who peppers his life from Tanja to Matthias through to his co-workers and mother (Walfriede Schmitt) all face the consequences of his coming out.

With tender performances that bring the sharp writing to life and poignant set pieces, Coming Out is a queer masterwork at the cusp of the transition of the late eighties and into a new decade of East Germany.

Featuring transgender activist Charlotte von Mahlsdorf and real-life Nazi resistance fighter Werner Dissel in cameo roles, director Heiner Carow‘s film is a seminal classic of European gay themed cinema during the period where America’s New Queer Cinema movement was emerging.

 

Check out the new Blu-ray edition below and click here to pre-order your copy. Coming Out will be available on Blu-ray starting October 31st at TLAgay.

 

 

Out This Week: Golden Boy

Director Stoney Westmoreland‘s Golden Boy is a gritty gay drama – telling a story of trust, seduction, betrayal and redemption.

Mark Elias, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jonathan Browning, stars as James, a young man struggling to make it in Los Angeles and gambling on the dangers of being seen. Saved from doomed nonexistence by CQ (Lex Medlin), a wealthy and debonair businessman with more going on than meets the eye, he is introduced to a dangerous underworld that he is not ready to navigate.

Golden Boy follows James down the rabbit hole as he chases his dreams – while losing himself one piece at a time.

Watch the trailer for Golden Boy below and click here to order your copy. The film is now available on DVD and Blu-ray at TLAgay.

 

Coming Soon: Rosodium

Suffering from severe panic attacks, introverted young engineer Noah (Thibaut Cattelin) has been looking for a way to re-live only his happiest moments. During an eventful road trip with his two best friends, he meets Lohan (Jules Bahloul), a bad-boy tattoo artist, and invites him along for the final week of their journey.

An attraction quickly develops between the two young men. Along the way, they experience all the exhilarating moments of first love, but Noah will soon have to face the reality that not everything is as rosy as it seems.

From French director Theodore Tomasz, Rosodium is a tender gay romance that plays with time and structure in unexpected ways.

 

Watch the trailer for Rosodium below and click here to pre-order your copy. The film will be available on DVD and VOD starting October 24th.

 

Out This Week: Elephant

From Polish writer-director Kamil KrawczyckiElephant is a gorgeous gay romance following Bartek (Jan Hrynkiewicz), a dutiful son who runs a small horse farm and looks after his mother (Ewa Kolasinska) – who is afraid of being left alone.

One day, Dawid (Pawel Tomaszewski) arrives in town for his father’s funeral. An older, more cosmopolitan musician, Dawid and Bartek have seemingly little in common. Nonetheless, the pair soon find themselves embroiled in an illicit affair which quickly evolves into a deep romance.

When Bartek goes with Dawid to a gay club in a nearby city, the sudden freedom begins to fuel his desire to leave home, but his familial responsibilities weigh heavily on his heart. Will he find the courage to leave home and reach out for the happiness he deserves?

Shot partly in one of Poland’s notoriously conservative “LGBT-free zones” – areas that reject any form of “LGBT propaganda” – making Elephant is a surprisingly subversive film that tells a moving, proudly old-fashioned romantic story.

 

Watch the trailer for Elephant below and click here to order your copy. The film is now available on DVD at TLAgay.

 

Today Only: Get an Extra 50% OFF Everything On-Demand and More at TLAgay!

For one day only (TODAY – September 20th, 2023), you can get 50% OFF EVERYTHING ON-DEMAND at TLAGAY! That includes rentals and downloads. Now is the time to build up your digital library! Click the banner below to starts browsing and placing your order!

This amazing offer will expire TOMORROW (Thursday, September 21st, 2023) at 4:00 PM ET!

 

Out This Week: At Night All the Cats Are Black

A deliberately strange cinematic exercise, the new film At Night All the Cats Are Black was largely improvised by the cast and crew. Filmmakers Valentin Merz and Robin Mognetti, who plays versions of themselves, have described it as “dreamy, impulsive, coherently illogical, shamelessly artsy and hell bent on surprising its viewers.” Packed with bold visual delights, this film is never afraid to push the envelope – in terms of both sexuality and structure.

At Night All the Cats Are Black follows a film crew in the middle of shooting a surreal and sexually-charged costume drama in the French countryside. When Valentin, the film’s director, suddenly disappears, the local police set out to investigate. The shoot continues, but starts to take increasingly odd turns as Robin, the cameraman and director’s lover, soon follows through on a mysterious promise.

Click below to watch the NSFW trailer and click here to order your copy. At Night All the Cats Are Black is now available on DVD.

 

 

 

 

Just Came Out: The Latent Image

The new gay thriller The Latent Image follows novelist Ben (Joshua Tonks) as he retreats to an isolated rural cabin to start on his latest novel and to escape the growing tension with his boyfriend Jamie (William Tippery).

Working late into the night, he wakes to find someone else in his cabin, a wounded man (Jay Clift) claiming to be a hunter whose car had broken down nearby. Intrigued by and attracted to the mysterious and handsome intruder, Ben decides uses him as inspiration for his new book… about a savage murder believed to have taken place in the very cabin he has rented.

As the man begins to help him enact increasingly dangerous and detailed scenarios for the story’s captive protagonist, Ben becomes aroused by the prospects. Searching the man’s car, he uncovers stolen property belonging to several other young men – hinting he may be a serial killer, a perfect twist for Ben’s novel. Discovering his own car sabotaged, and unable to escape, Ben enters a lethal game of cat and mouse where his dark, erotic, fantasy becomes a stark, inescapable reality.

A tense, sexually-charged gay thriller from writer-director Alexander McGregor Birrell, The Latent Image tells a chilling story wherein the lines between reality and fiction become increasingly blurred.

Watch the trailer for The Latent Image below and click here to order your copy. The film is now available on DVD.