FILM REVIEW: Iris Prize shorts Part 1 – Queer Youth – Scene Magazine

The 15 short British films from this year’s prestigious Iris Prize LGBTQ+ film festival are now available free on Channel 4’s All 4 platform.

In my first look, I watched six shorts under the banner of Queer Youth.

From Northern Ireland, Homebird is about the awkward reunion of a Gay son and father, when Conor returns home after having left with his then boyfriend. It’s moody, with a kind of grieving atmosphere and there’s comedy in the awkwardness of father and son, as Conor’s family try to adjust to his new life. There’s a painful gulf but signs of hope.

Piss Witch is a clever juxtaposition of a folk tale about a local old woman, who can allegedly urinate over the church wall and a blossoming girl with ever-growing breasts, which she is hugely self-conscious about. Her mother’s attitude is: ‘if you’ve got it, flaunt it’. The implication is that the girl in question – Clare – clearly feels she is the wrong gender. When she’s repeatedly stalked she takes drastic if slightly funny action – as the title implies. We’re given a play on the word Whizzer – which means both breasts and someone who urinates. It’s a story that leaves you wanting more.

Keep Off The Grass is about a young footballer, Sonny, who denies his queerness, but has a sudden attraction to another male player. It’s a tightly-told story of coming out, denial and identity. Sonny’s younger brother knows the truth and supports him and the film’s closing moments are a queer affirmation that works well.

The Welsh film Nant was to me a puzzlement. It mixes mythic folklore with a cross-dressing boy Dion, who sings falsetto in a small choir in Snowdonia and is constantly humiliated and abused by his fellow choristers. When a stranger appears, there is further turmoil. A clearer exposition would have helped but it’s intriguing.

Silence features Joseph, who spends his nights away from home creating huge graffiti artworks. In a derelict building he finds a girl practising ballet, and he’s hooked – acquiring a full-length practice mirror. It’s a kind of mixed heritage Billy Elliott tribute, but there are complications when his irate father finds him pirouetting. It has a brilliant ending where ballerina and boy dance a stunning pas de deux to funk music. CBBC and Blue Peter presenter Kai Joseph Keenan-Felix is outstanding as the boy dancer and clearly has a great future in both acting and dance

Fluorescent Adolescent is set in England in 1987, we’re told. Brittany has found herself a gay friend, a boy called Faras, but this is treated with open hostility and ignorance by her mother, who is brandishing the recently-published government leaflet about the dangers of AIDS. In the end there’s a reconciliation of sorts and Faras is allowed to visit, knowing of course that Brittany is gay too. It’s an endearing story that could go further.