Sun Aug 9
All Day
All Day
Queer Cinema from Germany – Aren’t You Happy? (Das melancholische Mädchen) [Online]
film
** This film is only available to viewers in the US. **
Goethe Pop Up Seattle, in partnership with Three Dollar Bill Cinema, Gay City, and NWFF present Queer Cinema from Germany, a virtual film series that serves as an introduction to the multiplicity of stories at the heart of contemporary LGBTQ+ films.
Parvis, the son of exiled Iranians, copes with life in his small hometown by indulging himself with pop culture, Grindr dates, and raves. After being caught shoplifting, he is sentenced to community service at a refugee shelter where he meets siblings Banafshe and Amon, who have fled Iran. As a romantic attraction between Parvis and Amon grows, the fragile relationship between the three is put to a test. They find and lose each other throughout a summer of fleeting youth, an intense first love, an attempt at a joint future, as well as the stark realisation that, in Germany, they are not equal.
In his powerful debut peppered with pop-cultural references, Faraz Shariat turns his own experiences as an immigrant into an award-winning study of sexuality and identity in contemporary Germany. With a precise grasp of social context, he offers a sensitive insight into the experience of migrants in Germany caught between feeling foreign, being excluded and obtaining the permanent right to stay, and shows how even subsequent generations are still in the process of arriving.