Islands / You and the Night

Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive series Outfest UCLA Legacy Project. Register at cinema.ucla.edu to attend this in-theater screening.

Les îles, France, 2017

Winner of the Queer Palm for Best Short Film at the 2017 edition of the Cannes Film Festival, Islands sees characters wandering through an erotic maze of love and desire.

DCP, color, in French with English subtitles, 23 min. Director/Screenwriter: Yann Gonzalez. Cinematographer: Simon Beaufils. Editor: Raphaël Lefèvre. With: Sarah-Megan Allouch, Mathilde Mennetrier, Alphonse Maîtrepierre, Romain Merle. Courtesy of Altered Innocence.

Les rencontres d'après minuit, France, 2013

In his first feature-length film after a substantial effort in short-form filmmaking, Nice-born writer-director Yann Gonzalez riffs on character tropes à la The Breakfast Club with a sexy and markedly queer twist, underscored by the synthpop music of M83, Yann’s brother Anthony’s band. A longtime couple and their trans maid assemble a motley crew, including The Slut, The Teen, The Stud and The Star, for another of the trio’s frequent orgies. To everyone’s initial chagrin and eventual shared catharsis, a theater of the pansexual absurd, fueled by a collective hallucination, unfolds as a dreamlike tableaux of memories instead of the suck-and-f*ck they all showed up for. A tribute to the power of chosen families and the possibilities offered by pure cinematic imagination.

DCP, color, in French with English subtitles, 92 min. Director/Screenwriter: Yann Gonzalez. Cinematographer: Simon Beaufils. Editor: Raphaël Lefèvre. With: Kate Moran, Niels Schneider, Nicolas Maury, Eric Cantona, Fabienne Babe. Courtesy of Strand Releasing.