Acts of Love (film)

Last updated
Acts of Love
Acts of Love.jpeg
Directed by Isidore Bethel
Francis Leplay
Produced byLucie Rego
Pauline Tran Van Lieu
Jamie Gonçalves
Francis Leplay
Isidore Bethel
CinematographyRyan Saunders
Edited byFrancis Leplay
Production
companies
Hutong Productions
Sin Sitio Cine
Distributed byOutplay Films, Here TV [1] [2]
Release date
  • April 29, 2021 (2021-04-29)(Hot Docs)
Running time
71 minutes
Countries France
United States
LanguageEnglish

Acts of Love is a 2021 documentary-fiction hybrid film by Isidore Bethel and Francis Leplay that premiered in Hot Docs's Nightvision section, which focuses on future "cult classics." [3]

Contents

Plot

When his relationship with an older man in Mexico starts to wane, Bethel, who performs as himself in the film, travels to Chicago. He chats with hundreds of men on dating apps and invites them to make a film with him. A dozen meet him for an interview, and four agree to write and perform in a fictional film that their original conversations inspired.

Meanwhile, passages combining still images and voiceover from Bethel recount memories about the former lover. Throughout, the filmmaker's mother phones him to critique and ridicule her son's unusual project. [4] Describing his collaboration with Bethel in an interview with the Mexican newspaper Reforma , Leplay said, "The first thing I asked him was, 'how spontaneous were these auditions?' And far from being acted, they were quite natural. There wasn't a specific script, but that's how the story came about." [5]

Production

The film received screenwriting and postproduction support from France's Île-de-France region, [6] Eurodoc, and the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival's work-in-progress lab. [7]

Reception

Filmmaker magazine included Bethel on its 2020 list of the "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in recognition of his work on Acts of Love. [8] Upon its premiere, the film received positive press from several publications and blogs, including The Moveable Fest, [9] Xtra Magazine , [10] KinoCulture Montréal, [11] One Movie, Our Views, [12] and ForReel Movie News and Reviews. [13] The Hollywood Reporter wrote that "this exciting, genre-bending film...stands out in its exploration of attraction, desire, sex and intimacy." [14]

Now characterized it as "a bold, brave look at intimacy, honesty and the power dynamics that exist both in interpersonal relationships and between artist and subject." [15] Point of View Magazine noted that Acts of Love "is a thoughtful study of love and heartbreak, but ultimately a celebration of savouring the encounters that define us throughout our journeys." [16] Now, [17] Yohomo, [18] and The Queer Review [19] included the film on their lists of Hot Docs festival recommendations. The film received press throughout its festival run, including from Il manifesto , [20] Lifo , [21] Cult MTL , [22] and WCPT. [23]

Festivals

After its premiere, the film screened at several other festivals, including the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, Queer Lisboa, RIDM, the Paris LGBTQ+ Film Festival, and the Chicago, Transilvania, and St. Louis International Film Festivals. It received the Tacoma Film Festival's Best Documentary Feature Award and a Special Mention at Milan's Gender Border Film Festival, [24] [25] figured among Payal Kapadia's top-five films of 2021, [26] and ranked #4 on MovieWeb's list of Top 10 LGBTQ+ Movies of 2021. [27] Here TV released the film in the United States in 2022. [28]

Related Research Articles

<i>Antoine</i> (film) 2008 Canadian film

Antoine is a 2008 Canadian documentary film directed by Laura Bari. The film features a 5-year old blind boy named Antoine Houang, living in Montreal, Quebec. It tells the real and imaginary life of Antoine, a boy detective who runs, drives, makes decisions, hosts radio shows and adores simultaneous telephone conversations. Over the course of two years, he uses a mini-boom microphone to discover and capture the sounds surrounding him. In this manner he also co-created the soundtrack of the film.

<i>Derby Crazy Love</i> 2013 Canadian film

Derby Crazy Love is a Canadian documentary film directed by Maya Gallus and Justine Pimlott of Red Queen Productions, and distributed by Women Make Movies. The film explores flat track roller derby, and its third-wave feminist empowerment. It was initially released on November 14, 2013, at the Montreal International Documentary Festival.

Isidore Bethel is a French-American filmmaker who was among Filmmaker's "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in 2020 and DOC NYC's "40 Under 40" in 2023. The films he edits, directs, and produces use filmmaking to make sense of overwhelming experiences and touch on recurrent themes of displacement, sexuality, aging, trauma, grief, therapy, and art-making. His first feature film as director, Liam, premiered at the Boston LGBT Film Festival in 2018 and received the Jury Prize in the Documentary section of the Paris LGBTQ+ Film Festival. His second film, Acts of Love, which French actor Francis Leplay co-directed, premiered at Hot Docs, received the Tacoma Film Festival's Best Feature Award, and appeared on MovieWeb's list of the top LGBTQ+ films of 2021.

It's Always Late for Freedom is a 2008 Iranian documentary directed by Mehrdad Oskouei. The film depicts the life of three teenager boys in Tehran House of Correction. They are portrayed as victims of serious social problems such as addiction, poverty and divorce, which the Iranian society is faced with.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FYTA</span>

FYTA are an Athens-based conceptual art and performance art duo. Their work problematises Greek identity and nationalism. FYTA's work combines different media and disciplines mostly operating within the wider framework of overidentification, queer politics and anti-humanist art, while they aim at a performative destabilisation of concepts of truth and nature / the natural.

Irene Lusztig is a nonfiction filmmaker and artist. Her work explores historical memory, archival materials, communism and post-communism, as well as feminist historiography.

<i>Drag Kids</i> 2019 Canadian film

Drag Kids is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Megan Wennberg and released in 2019. The film centres on Queen Lactatia, Laddy GaGa, Suzan Bee Anthony and Bracken Hanke, four young children from Canada, the United States and Europe who perform as drag entertainers, and performed together for the first time at Fierté Montréal in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeremiah Hayes (filmmaker)</span> Canadian film director, writer and editor

Jeremiah Hayes is a Canadian film director, writer and editor. Hayes is known for being the co-director, co-writer and the editor of the documentary Reel Injun, which was awarded a Gemini Award in 2010 for Best Direction in a Documentary Program. In 2011, Reel Injun won a Peabody Award for Best Electronic Media. Hayes was the co-editor of Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World, which was awarded a Canadian Screen Award for Best Editing in a Documentary in 2018. In 2018, Rumble won a Canadian Screen Award for Best Feature Length Documentary, and in 2017 Rumble won the Special Jury Award for Masterful Storytelling at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017. In 2020, Rumble received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Arts & Culture Documentary. In 2021, Reel Injun is featured in the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures core exhibition of the Stories of Cinema.

<i>Liam</i> (2018 film) 2018 American film

Liam is a 2018 first-person documentary film directed by Isidore Bethel. It follows the director's own story as he moves to France after his best friend Liam dies back in the United States. Through documentary, performance, and stop motion animation, a ghostly portrait emerges of Liam, prompting Isidore to question his relationships with his parents and his boyfriend in Paris. The film premiered at the Boston LGBT Film Festival and received the Paris LGBTQ+ Film Festival's Documentary Jury Prize in 2018. The francophone streaming service Tënk acquired the film in 2019 for streaming.

Francis Leplay is a French actor and writer. An alumnus of France's National Academy of Dramatic Arts and Sciences Po, he began acting on television in episodes of the French detective series Julie Lescaut and Navarro. His first film role was in Laurence Ferreira Barbosa's J'ai horreur de l'amour in 1997. His career took off in the 2000s, and he soon started acting in films by directors Sofia Coppola, Noémie Lvovsky, Arnaud Desplechin, and Benoît Jacquot as well as in the TV series Spiral. He has also acted in theater productions with directors Denis Podalydès and Lambert Wilson in venues such as Lincoln Center, the Mossovet Theatre, and the Bouffes du Nord. The Éditions du Seuil published two of his novels, 2006's Après le spectacle, a work of autofiction comparing intermittent acting work and romantic uncertainty, and 2009's Samuel et Alexandre, which follows two men staking out the bounds of their friendship. In 2021, Leplay and French-American filmmaker Isidore Bethel co-directed the docufiction hybrid film Acts of Love, which premiered at Hot Docs.

Mother Saigon is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Khoa Lê and released in 2023. The film is a portrait of the LGBTQ community in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

<i>Who I Am Not</i> Romania, Canada, South Africa, Germany, USA film

Who I Am Not is a 2023 documentary film exploring what it means to be intersex in a binary world, directed by Tunde Skovran. It is her directorial debut. The documentary is produced by Andrei Zincã, and with executive producer Patricia Arquette. Greenwich Entertainment acquired rights to the film.

References

  1. ↑ "Acts of Love". Hot Docs . Retrieved 30 April 2021.
  2. ↑ "Acts of Love". Here TV . Retrieved 20 August 2022.
  3. ↑ "A Year too Real—and a Festival for its Hot Docs". Point of View Magazine . 30 April 2021. Retrieved 30 April 2021.
  4. ↑ "Acts of Love". Hot Docs . Retrieved 30 April 2021.
  5. ↑ "Dedica documental a su ex mexicano". Reforma . Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  6. ↑ "AIDES À L'ÉCRITURE DE SCÉNARIO : 23 AUTEUR.TRICE.S SOUTENU.E.S". Film Paris Region. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  7. ↑ "22nd TDF: Agora Doc Market". Thessaloniki Documentary Festival . 24 February 2020. Retrieved 30 April 2021.
  8. ↑ "Isidore Bethel". Filmmaker Magazine 25 New Faces of Independent Film. 19 October 2020. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  9. ↑ "Hot Docs 2021 Review: Isidore Bethel Flirts with Danger in "Acts of Love"". The Moveable Fest. May 2021. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  10. ↑ "From Black lesbian thinkers to the hottest Hot Docs". Xtra Magazine . Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  11. ↑ "Acts of Love". KinoCulture Montréal. 3 May 2021. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  12. ↑ "#HotDocs21 Review: Acts of Love". One Movie, Our Views. 7 May 2021. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  13. ↑ "Hot Docs 2021, "Acts of Love" Tries to Get to the Heart of What Love Means to Isidore Bethel". ForReel Movie News and Reviews. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  14. ↑ "'Acts of Love': Film Review, Hot Docs 2021". The Hollywood Reporter . 10 May 2021. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  15. ↑ "Hot Docs review: Acts Of Love". Now Magazine . 29 April 2021. Retrieved 30 April 2021.
  16. ↑ "Acts of Love Review: Dating Doc Swipes Right". Point of View Magazine . 29 April 2021. Retrieved 30 April 2021.
  17. ↑ "Hot Docs 2021: 12 must-see films according to NOW critics". Now Magazine . May 2021. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  18. ↑ "10 Queer Films To Watch (From Home) At The 2021 Hot Docs Film Fest". Yohomo. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  19. ↑ "LGBTQ+ highlights at Hot Docs 2021". The Queer Review. 23 April 2021. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  20. ↑ "When Sex and Art Infect Each Other". Il manifesto . 6 July 2021. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  21. ↑ "15 unmissable films at the 23rd Thessaloniki Documentary Festival". Lifo . 13 June 2021. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  22. ↑ "What to watch online at Montreal documentary film festival RIDM". Cult MTL . 18 November 2021. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  23. ↑ "Out Chicago 10.17.21". WCPT 820. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  24. ↑ "TACOMA FILM FESTIVAL WINNERS". Tacoma Film Festival. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  25. ↑ "Gender Border Film Festival: i premi". ildogville.it. 8 November 2022. Retrieved 26 November 2022.
  26. ↑ "L'année ciné 2021 par celles et ceux qui l'ont faite". Le Polyester. 30 December 2021. Retrieved 20 August 2022.
  27. ↑ "Top 10 LGBTQ+ Movies of 2021". MovieWeb . 26 December 2021. Retrieved 20 August 2022.
  28. ↑ "Watch Acts of Love". Amazon (company) . Retrieved 20 August 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.