This Hindi movie is a pretty straightforward slice-of-life story that tries to give a modern look at what it's like to be a single, professional gay man. It dives into how he understands who he is, the chances he missed out on, and the personal choices he’s made along the way. The director used three parallel timelines to tell the story, which honestly didn't make much sense to me. While the core idea was actually pretty interesting, I really feel like this would have worked way better as a short film considering the point it was trying to make. Still, it wasn't a bad watch. The plot centers on Rachit, a city professional, and his friend Shikhar as they hang out for an evening. Rachit is a polished, urban guy, while Shikhar has more of a "small-town" rustic vibe, and you can really see the contrast between them when they talk. As the night goes on, Rachit starts thinking back to some old memories from a long time ago. He remembers being an intern after college in ...
Riyadh (Iraqi/Irish descent) addresses a lot of issues wrt LGBTQ+ community in this six-part BBC3 series. Riyadh address many subjects in these episodes, right from religion & sexuality, discrimination & body shaming, how every 1 out of 4 people that are homeless are from LGBTQ community, what ethnic racism is like in Britain, pornography and finally the queer in LGBTQ+. In every episode we meet a few main subjects and hear their stories of that topic that we are learning about. Most of these things are not new to me, given I am 'ethnic", not have the 6 pack body, immigrant etc, I was able to relate but even to me some of the things shown was shocking. I was surprised to hear that ration of LGBTQ folks in overall homeless folks and hearing some of the stories of people who were thrown off their homes was very disturbing.
This documentary is interesting because Riyadh also tries to find something personal in each of these 6 segments: right from shooting a porn film, to doing a nude photo shoot and talking to the people as if he has known them for ages. The easy charm and connect he makes with people is unmissable and thats what I believe makes people open up to him. As an audience we are in awe of his charisma and yet shocked, surprised and even horrified at some of the stories you get to hear. We think times have changed and things would be different for LGBTQ community in a first world country like UK, but we have miles to walk. Its almost impossible to imagine how hard the life is probably for other countries if this is what can still happen in Britain.
This is absolutely a must watch documentary, for more reasons that just one. (7/10)
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