Project Homophobia
Fresh from the amazing success of his short film The Boy Next Door (vimeo.com/8916870), that has been watched nearly two million times on YouTube alone, director Gregor Schmidinger returns with news of his latest project. This time the talented 26 year-old film maker turns his attention to the contentious issue of gay bullying. Which, following the deaths of many young people recently, like Jamey Rodemeyer, is an even more important and emotive than before.
So first of all, what is this new film all about - well, put simply it’s the story of an adolescent boy, who serves in the Military, and everything is normal and usual until he experiences some homosexual feelings towards one of his comrades. Now, undergoing these feelings in an uber-masculine, macho and homophobic environment makes it pretty much impossible to speak to anybody about the situation and the feelings.
The film enters the story on their last night at the Austrian-Hungarian border where the inner conflict bubbles up to the surface and forces the two characters to navigate through the crisis socially isolated and armed with loaded weapons.
I’ve read the English translation of the screenplay and seen the emotive, dark, intriguing and slightly foreboding mood teaser and it looks to be a very powerful and promising short film. Homophobia is scheduled and designed to be a live action short film, with an estimate running time of around 20 to 30 minutes. Gregor and the team will shoot this powerful story on location in Austria to offer even more authenticity to the project. At the moment the physical shooting should start sometime at the beginning of February 2012. The plan is then to hold the World Premiere on or in the week of 17th May 2012. That date is important, as that is the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.
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