Adam is a Catholic priest who discovered his calling as a servant of God at the relatively late age of 21. He now lives in a village in rural Poland where he works with teenagers with behavioural problems who fight and yell abuse. He declines the advances of a young blonde named Ewa, saying he is already spoken for. However, celibacy is not the only reason for his rejection. Adam knows that he desires men and that his embrace of the priesthood has been a flight from his own sexuality. When he meets Łukasz, the strange and taciturn son of a simple rural family, Adam's self‐imposed abstinence becomes a heavy burden. Małgośka Szumowska’s visually powerful film, charged with striking imagery from Christ’s Passion, dares to broach the still taboo topic of homosexuality in the priesthood. Confronted with his ‘forbidden’ desires, her protagonist experiences both moments of bliss and utter despair. A film about confused emotions, repression and loneliness – and the possibility of perhaps finding oneself after all.

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Twelve years after her explosive debut, Baise‐moi, Virginie Despentes is back with the decidedly lighter tale of two middle‐aged women struggling to rekindle their teen‐aged romance after three decades. 40‐ year‐old Gloria (Béatrice Dalle) is still a volatile, art‐punk drifter in the north‐eastern city of Nancy. Frances (Emmanuelle Béart) has settled into a comfortably bourgeois life of marriage (to a gay man) and a career in television. With trouble brewing at work and a husband struggling with writer’s block, however, Frances impetuously summons Gloria to stay with her in Paris, searching for the magic she felt as a rebellious, love‐struck teenager. Youth’s poignant intensity versus middle‐aged nostalgia are evoked in alternating scenes from Gloria and Frances’ young love circa 1984, and the present. With passionate performances by Soko and Clara Ponsot (who play the young Gloria and Frances), a Lydia Lunch cameo and a kickass soundtrack (Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bérurier Noir), this is a film for anybody who has ever wondered about the possibility – or wisdom – of trying to recapture their first big love."

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A film about a film within a film. In order to avoid an X rating, 40 minutes of gay S&M footage was rumored to be cut and destroyed from the 1980 film, “Cruising.” Inspired by the mythology of this controversial film, filmmakers James Franco and Travis Mathews collaborate to imagine their own lost footage. Amid the backdrop of a frenzied film set, actor Val Lauren reluctantly agrees to take the lead in the film. Val is repeatedly forced to negotiate his boundaries during scenes on and “off camera,” as unsimulated gay sex happens around him. The film itself is constructed as a play with boundaries remaining queer in subject and form. As much a film about filmmaking as it is about an exploration of sexual and creative freedom, “Interior. Leather Bar.” defies easy categorization. NEW ENGLAND PREMIERE

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