He was a young priest, the youngest in the entire school.
I remember wishing death upon everything as I saw who had come to my aid. The door to our room flew open and the sight to be seen was two boys in their night wear, one bleeding and sobbing on the ground while the other was perched on top. I don't know how long I struggled with him but it seemed like a painful eternity. I screamed and held up my arms to block his blows, but he was bigger and stronger than me and he was angry beyond words. I mean, we all do, right? Especially when we're young. I was smart, I had fantastic grades, no one suspected I was different.īut.I made a mistake. I just had to get through it, treat the theology like a game to play, and eventually distance myself from it all when I moved out of the house. No one had to know I was gay, no one had to know I didn't believe in God. When I was done with elementary school, I was shipped off to a notoriously strict Catholic boarding school, the name of which I won't say. I studied the good book, I went to Church, I avoided the temptation of admiring Devon Sawa.whole nine yards. As I grew and matured, I stopped believing in God altogether.īut I loved my family, and so I kept it all bottled inside. No just God would make me a sinner on purpose. I hated the God who would go out of the way to make me different from other boys, to give me something sinful and awful that I couldn't control. From a very young age I remember not being okay with God. The diary-type film, set in the film-maker's hometown, shows a traditional society in which parents care more about their reputation than about their gay children's happiness.I'm a gay man who grew up in a very, very devout Catholic family. "You get, of course, prejudice and some violence against a particular community on the one hand, but you also get this very progressive law which basically allows everyone to identify their own gender, and also identifies a third gender," he said.įor its short film award, the "Queer Palm" jury picked "Will You Look At Me" by Chinese director Shuli Huang. "Pakistan is very schizophrenic, almost bipolar," director Saim Sadiq told AFP in an interview. In 2009, Pakistan legally recognised a third sex, and in 2018 the first transgender passport was issued. Part of the surprise stemmed from the discovery by many at Cannes that Pakistan is one the first nations to have given legal protection against discrimination to transgender people. "Joyland" left Cannes audiences slack-jawed and admiring and got a standing ovation from the opening night's crowd. "Joyland" beat off several other strong entries, including "Close" by Belgian director Lukas Dhont and "Tchaikovsky's Wife" by Kirill Serebrennikov, both hot contenders for the Cannes Festival's top Palme d'Or award which will be announced on Saturday. Past winners of the prize, created in 2010 by critic Franck Finance-Madureira, include Todd Haynes for "Carol" and Xavier Dolan for "Laurence Anyways". "It makes me sad that the festival is still cold-shouldering the Queer Palm," Corsini said. Not so at Cannes, where the festival's leadership will not even allow the "Queer Palm" - which has been running for a decade - to set up shop in its main building, the Palais du Festival.
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The "Queer Palm" has been won by big-name directors in the past and attracted top talent to its juries, but has no official place at the world's top film festival.Īwards for films with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer content are already an integral part of other major movie gatherings, including Berlin which has handed out its "Teddy Award" since 1987, and made it part of its official programme. "It has strong characters who are both complex and real. "'Joyland' will echo across the world," Corsini said. Corsini herself took the award last year with "La Fracture", which features a lesbian couple's relationship against the backdrop of the "Yellow Vest" movement in France.