There’s no surer sign that awards season has begun than the arrival of a tearjerker like Freeheld. Based on a true story, the film depicts the final years of New Jersey police detective Laurel Hester’s life (she’s played by Julianne Moore), in which she falls in love with Stacie Andree (Ellen Page), is diagnosed with late-stage cancer, and is prohibited by the Ocean County, New Jersey county court to pass along her earned pension to Stacie, her legal domestic partner. Laurel’s battle for equal rights made national news, but she and Stacie remained each others’ top priority until the end.

More than anything, what Freeheld gets right is that it’s a love story from beginning to end. It’s about a remarkable relationship that held strong in the face of death and injustice, not the injustice itself. The movie is very romantic and more adorable than you’d expect. Its primary goal is to pay tribute to Laurel and Stacie rather than galvanize people to make change (though it does that too).

One criticism the film can’t avoid is that its structure is formulaic, which it absolutely is. The script, written by Philadelphia screenwriter Ron Nyswaner, doesn’t take any chances and presents the story without stylistic inflection. Director Peter Sollett doesn’t get very inventive with his visuals either, but that doesn’t mean the film is artless. The filmmaking and plot do just enough to support the performances of Moore and Page, both of which are monumental and powerful enough to make the movie a solid success.

The lead actors’ chemistry takes off immediately when Laurel and Stacie meet at a friendly volleyball game. Their attraction is obvious though Laurel is still in the closet as her high-standing position at the police station would surely be under threat should her narrow-minded brethren learn about her sex life (this all takes place in 2005, a much less LGBT-friendly time than 2015). Laurel and Stacie fall hard for one another despite the difficult, secretive nature of their romance and decide to apply for domestic partnership.

They move into a fixer-upper and are immediately visited by Laurel’s longtime police partner, Dane Wells (Michael Shannon), who sees Stacie working in the front yard and takes her for the gardener. Too much of the movie spends time using Shannon as a proxy for the LGBT uninformed though Wells’ arc is nevertheless true to life. With Laurel on the verge of getting the promotion of her life and the handy Stacie landing the perfect gig at an autoshop, life couldn’t be grander.

Tragedy strikes when Laurel gets cancer and is told she doesn’t have much time left. Naturally, she wants to arrange for her pension to be rightfully passed on to Stacie so that she won’t lose their dream house. Her wishes aren’t granted, however, by the county’s Board of Freeholders, who deny Laurel’s request. A courtroom battle turns into a gay rights demonstration when a loudmouth gay rights activist (Steve Carell) stages a takeover, filling the courtroom with fellow activists, essentially hijacking Laurel’s case in the name of gay marriage (Laurel’s compliant, but would rather the fight be in the name of equality). Dane valiantly protects the couple as well, but Stacie is laser focused on Laurel throughout, as their time left together is slim.

The movie, smartly, feels in the spirit of Stacie and her struggle to stay single-minded. This could have been an underdog courtroom drama or a plasticky prestige piece, and it does veer into those territories several times. But ultimately Freeheld is a soul-stirring romance. Page and Moore don’t just look madly in love with one another; they look super-duper cute together, and that’s the difference-maker that makes this story feel genuine. Stacie is a soft-spoken, repressed person, so when she learns that a full recovery for Laurel is an impossibility, she sinks deep into hopelessness. Page is a heartbreaker, crying in helpless disbelief rather than wailing at the top of her lungs. Moore’s tasteful as well, and she and Page ebb and flow nicely as Laurel and Stacie support each other.

Unlike the atrocious Stonewall from a few weeks back (which took a big ol’ ignorant dump on one of the biggest moments in gay rights history), Freeheld plays to both gay and straight audiences. Moore and Page are given free reign to act their asses off and do the true story justice, and while Sollett and Nyswaner won’t win any awards for their contributions, their two leads are shoe-ins for Oscar noms.

As the LGBT rights movement continues to make huge strides in America, it feels like a fitting time to start to look back at the many battles fought by this ostracized and abused group of people. One such historical turning point is the Stonewall riots of 1969 in New York City, the violence and passion of which inspired the greater LGBT community to rally and get organized in their efforts for equality and safety.

Now we have a stirring first trailer for Roland Emmerich’s Stonewall, a film following a fictional young gay man, played by Jeremy Irvine, forced to flee his home when his sexual orientation proves too much for his friends and family, who ends up on the streets of Greenwich Village, NYC. He befriends a group of people made up of young gays, lesbians, and drag queens who introduce him to the Stonewall Inn, a gay-friendly mafia-run club and safe-haven. But eventually even their safe space starts to be regularly raided by the NYPD, who harass the people there. The historical consequence to this constant persecution was an eruption of rage in the form of two days of riots and a kick-off of the modern LGBT movement.

Though not the first film version of this important historical event, it certainly feels like the man who gave us Independence Day, Stargate, and The Patriot is a seasoned pro at igniting pride, and this two-minute trailer is plenty inspiring. The film also stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Joey King, and Ron Perlman and will be released in theaters September 25.

In the mid 1980s, thousands of British coal miners went on strike in reaction to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s vow to rid the U.K. of the National Union of Mineworkers, or NUM. After a hard-fought battle of walk-outs and picketing that occasionally descended into violence (three deaths were recorded), the miners were ultimately defeated by Thatcher’s regime. The damage to the mining community was devastating: Around the time of the strikes, there were 174 working mines. Today, there are only a handful, and many old mining villages have been reduced to veritable ghost towns, stricken with poverty and unemployment.

But there’s more to the story than that. There’s a silver lining that’s amplified and turned into a beacon of hope in Pride, a rousing, crowd-pleasing drama based on true events that proves the miners’ battle wasn’t fought in vein, thanks to the aid of some unlikely allies. You’ll be compelled to cheer and driven to tears, and the film earns every drop.

The focus is the forming of a shaky coalition: A group of young Londoners called Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), led by the uncompromising and charismatic Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer), extend a helping hand to the working-class strikers (LGSM views them as kindred spirits, as they too are being bullied and harassed by the heavy-handed police force). They hold buckets in the street, sending whatever they manage to scrounge up to the miners in hopes to aid in their losing battle.

The particular union they connect with is located in a village in South Wales, and following a visit from the union rep, Dai Donovan (Paddy Considine), Mark packs his activist friends into a brightly-decorated van and heads to the mining town to establish the newly formed partnership in person. Friction between the groups–stemming from the macho-minded miners’ skepticism and reluctance to accept LGSM’s help–inevitably arises, but inch by inch the two parties form a sturdy partnership.

At first glance, the plot’s trajectory may seem quite predictable or basic but, again, there’s more to the story than that. The extraordinary thing about Pride is that, underneath the mainstream presentation and heartstring-pulling manipulation (which never feels hokey, since it’s largely based in fact), it quietly expands the horizons of queer cinema: Gays are portrayed not as frail victims, but as powerful heroes and defenders, and they aren’t sexualized in the slightest (sex and romance are virtual non-factors). These subtle breaks from stereotype were designed by writer Stephen Beresford, who along with director Matthew Warchus have snuck a progressive, rule-breaking movie into mainstream cinemas.

The film breaks a less socio-political convention in that it doesn’t have a central character. It’s a true ensemble piece, boasting an expansive roster of characters played by actors who maximize their on-screen minutes. Each character is alive and memorable, despite the brevity of their appearances. Vets Bill Nighy (playing the town’s good-hearted voice of reason) and Imelda Staunton (as an open-armed welcomer of  the gay contingent) join Considine as union advocates of LGSM (all three will make you love them), while the LGSM crew is made up of similarly strong personalities. The Wire‘s Dominic West plays Jonathan Blake, a flamboyant partier who wins over some of the miners with his disco dance moves, while Andrew Scott plays his sheepish bookstore-owning partner Gethin. Fay Marsay is Steph, a punk-rock fireball who for a time is the only lesbian member of the group (she’s the “L” in LGSM, she says), who befriends Joe (George Mackay), a shy, sheltered college student who’s having the time of his life fighting for miner’s rights. Schnetzer, a relative newcomer, steals the show as the sole American cast member, pulling off a flawless Irish accent and exercising real dominance in his sleek leather jacket and sharp haircut.

Most of the film’s laughs stem from the older ladies’ blunt and open curiosity about the gay community: When they find a dildo underneath a bed during their visit to London, they laugh, scream, and convulse like giddy schoolgirls. Sometimes the jumps from pathos to comedy and back again feel a bit herky-jerky. Beresford has fashioned an incredibly dense script, of which the bumpy tonal shifts are likely symptomatic. But all in all, the sprawling nature of the story lends the film a sense of forward momentum, as Beresford’s thoughtful, organized plot construction keeps the myriad faces and events from feeling jumbled. Most of the heavier drama comes in the film’s final third, when the AIDS epidemic rears its ugly head and some of our LGSM friends are affected.

There’s only one clear villain to keep track of in the film, a homophobic miner’s widow (Lisa Palfrey) who tips off the tabloids to the union’s new supporters, resulting in a newspaper headline that reads, “Pits and Perverts”. Mark convinces his mates to embrace and hijack the insult, brainstorming an idea to hold a fund-raising concert back in London and call it–you guessed it–“Pits and Perverts”.

And it’s that philosophy of taking a bad thing and using positivity to flip it around that gives Pride its power. Yes, the mining community was all but ravaged following their hard defeat, but as Dai says in the film, “To find out you had a friend you never knew existed…well that’s the best feeling in the world.” In a time when even children’s films have to be sarcastic and snarky to draw money, it’s reassuring to see a feel-good film that unapologetically embraces hope and sentimentality. Even better, it’s good to see a film that, like its heroes, fights with heart and ingenuity to change people’s minds.

Pride trailer

Before World Pride inevitably takes over all of Toronto at the end of June, the 24th Annual Toronto LGBT Film Festival is currently happening from May 22 to June 1. The festival is a great showcase of films dealing with youth and LGBT issues from around the world. This year’s line-up is already filled with some highlights, including the HBO film The Normal Heart along with Ira Sachs’ hotly anticipated Love is Strange, a film getting Oscar buzz already for its two lead performances.

We wanted to share our thoughts on a few of the films playing this year, while letting people know of a great chance to check out some little-known and important films over the next 10 days. There are many more films playing, so be sure to check out the schedule here to see what films are playing. Screening information for the films reviewed will be included below as well. You can find out more information about Inside Out at their official website, www.insideout.ca.

The Dog

Screens May 31, 2014 at TIFF Bell Lightbox

The Dog is a companion piece of sorts to Sidney Lumet’s film Dog Day Afternoon. John Wojtowicz is the man Al Pacino’s character is based on, and the subject of Allison Berg & Frank Keraudren’s documentary. Wojtowicz was married with two children before he accepted his homosexuality (while people classify Wojtowicz as gay, the self-described “pervert” is most likely bisexual) and joined the gay rights movement back in 1970s New York. He met his second wife Elizabeth, a transgender woman desperately wanting a sex change she couldn’t afford. After his wife’s frequent suicide attempts landed her in a psych ward, Wojtowicz decided to rob a bank in order to pay for the surgery. The rest, as they say, is history.

Berd and Keraudren made The Dog over a long period, following Wojtowicz (who eventually succumbed to cancer in 2006) and interviewing various people from his life. The presentation is bland, instead relying on the charisma of its subject to carry things forward. Wojtowicz also creates another major problem for the film: he’s shown in a positive and sometimes sympathetic light, a decision that makes zero sense considering what the man has done. Many parts of his story are tossed aside or glossed over, the most sickening example being when he casually talks about sexually assaulting someone like it’s a funny anecdote. Interviews with Wojtowicz’s mother don’t provide any pertinent material, and only a few talking head interviews give some sort of context to Wojtowicz’s story. The Dog picks a subject worth exploring in a documentary, it just goes about it in one of the worst possible ways.

Kidnapped for Christ

Screens May 25, 2014 at TIFF Bell Lightbox

Director Kate Logan started Kidnapped for Christ as a young film student and evangelical Chrisitian. While doing missionary work in the Dominican she hears of a Escuela Caribe, a nearby camp helping troubled teens. She looks at it as the perfect opportunity for a documentary, profiling troubled teens and watching their path to recovery through faith. She spent over six weeks at Escuela Caribe, and soon discovered an entirely different story.

Most of the children she interviewed didn’t show signs of needing to be shipped off to a $72k a year behavioural school. Beth is a young girl with nothing more than intense anxiety problems, and Tai is a teenager with drug problems as a result of past traumas in her life. Logan eventually realizes the camp is like an abusive labour camp more than anything. Students are classified into different levels based on their behaviour, and even the tiniest infraction against the camp’s absurd standards results in punishments ranging from solitary confinement (“The Quiet Room”) to physical abuse (referred to as “swats”). Logan focuses primarily on David, a 17 year old forcefully taken from his home after coming out to his parents.

Logan’s amateur filmmaking both helps and hurts the film. Her own commentary is fascinating at times, as she clearly has no idea how to pursue the film she wants to make once she starts getting pushback from the camp’s officials. Watching her try to adapt herself to continue exposing the camp, along with inserting herself into the story when she sneaks a letter from David out of the camp, is exciting to watch. Logan’s transformation from a passive observer to an active one only works in small doses though. Her involvement can sometimes feel too self-indulgent, like when she narrates about questioning her faith as a result of filming. The same goes for the last block of the film, a sort of half-assed epilogue briefly going over how places like Escuela Caribe house thousands of teens all over the world. These issues are relatively minor though, as Kidnapped for Christ has a topic that, at its core, is bound to compel viewers.

Tom at the Farm

Screens May 26, 2014 at TIFF Bell Lightbox

Tom at the Farm is Xavier Dolan’s fourth film, and it’s a departure for the young filmmaker. Dolan heads into genre territory, adapting a play about a young man (Dolan) visiting his deceased boyfriend’s estranged family. The family, a mother and son living on a farm in rural Quebec, pose a lot of problems for Tom. The mother (Lise Roy) never knew about her son’s sexual orientation, and her other son (Pierre-Yves Cardinal) terrorizes Tom into making sure he won’t tell her the truth. The relationship between Tom and his dead boyfriend’s family soon gets a lot more complicated, as Tom starts working at the farm while enduring constant abuse from the brother.

Dolan has quite the eye for visuals, and Tom is his best film yet. That doesn’t exactly say too much though, as Dolan has continually made so-so films up to this point. Tom at the Farm suffers from writing that eventually steers into the implausible. Tom’s decision to stay at the farm increasingly makes no sense, mainly because he’s such an underdeveloped character. Roy and Cardinal, on the other hand, are excellent as the grieving family. This turns Tom at the Farm into the kind of thriller where characters feel more like puppets for the writer than actual people. It’s this kind of poor writing, along with several ineffective visual choices from Dolan, that hold the film back.

A full-length review of Tom at the Farm will go online next week to coincide with its Canadian release

The Case Against 8

Screens May 30, 2014 at TIFF Bell Lightbox

We’ve talked about The Cast Against 8 before in our Hot Docs coverage earlier this year, but it’s worth mentioning again. This is a well-done documentary dealing with the legal battle to declare California’s Proposition 8 as unconstitutional. Through its profiles of the lawyers working on the case, along with the two same-sex couples serving as plaintiffs, The Case Against 8 is yet another reminder of how same sex equality is a human rights issue, not a political one. It made our Top 10 of Hot Docs, and if you weren’t able to catch it back in April you should definitely see it here while you have the chance.

In Concussion, first-time writer-director Stacie Passon gives us a glimpse into the doldrums of lesbian suburbia and how a bored housewife (Robin Weigert), awakened to her unfulfilling malaise by her son (who conks her in the head with a baseball), attempts to unleash her true inner-self by becoming a hooker. Unoriginal this movie is not, in a most beautiful, sensual, riveting way.

Hours before the screening of Concussion at San Francisco’s Frameline Film Festival back in June, Stacie Passon chatted with us at The Hilton San Francisco Union Square Hotel about living in the suburbs, her experience at the IFP Narrative Lab, the best week of her life, Robin Weigert’s shocking physical transformation for the role, making people squirm, and more.

Read our interview with stars Robin Weigert and Jonathan Tchaikovsky

Where did you get the idea for the story? Did your son actually hit you in the head with a baseball?
Yeah. My son has a really good arm and he wanted to practice. (laughs) My daughter was diverting my attention, he threw and the poor kid didn’t know I wasn’t looking. My behavior was awful! I had gotten to this point where I had a 9-year-old and a 6-year-old at the time, and I felt like it was my “fuck this” moment. Like, “What am I doing? What am I doing?” I started writing in short order and it was a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” moment.

Did you really call him a little shit?
No comment. Maybe you should ask him that. (laughs)

How do you like living in the suburbs?
It’s interesting. Since I’ve made the film, I’ve found a sense of community in the suburbs that I didn’t know existed. I think the lesson is–Wherever you are, be who you are, and then you’re going to meet like-minded people. I moved to the suburbs around four years ago, before production [on the film started]. I sat and painted in my house and I had nothing to do, really. This was during the financial crisis, too. I was doing a lot of commercial work, but that had kind of dried up and I became a full-time mom for a while. I was like, “Oh my god…this sucks!” It just does. You lose all sense of yourself and you feel that everything you’re doing is sacrificing for your kids. I lost myself for a bit.

Before we get into the film, could you talk a bit about the IFP Lab, the grants you received, and other support you’ve gotten for the film?
The film community is one of my favorite things of which to talk. The independent film community has really come to the table for Concussion. It started with the IFP Narrative Lab, and we halted editing to do a finishing lab with IFP in New York. That lab is led by Amy Dodson, Joana Vicente, who’s head of IFP, and Scott Macaulay, who runs Filmmaker Magazine. It’s a wonderful team that they have. What they do is, they bring in first time filmmakers who’ve made their films for under a million dollars into a finishing lab, and they teach them about what the next phase of finishing editorial–color, sound, composing, score. A lot of us have had that experience of doing all of that, but they gave us a lot of resources, etc.

The next part of it was independent distribution. They want to find a home for these films. John Reiss comes in and does the indie distribution part of it. He wrote a book called Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul with Sheri Chandler. They’re very interested in making sure all their films find either homes at distribution or have the tools for self distribution, which I thought was so awesome. It was actually the best week of my life. Through IFP many grants came as well.

Best week of your life?
IFP was one of the best professional weeks of my life because I love sitting and learning from people. It’s my favorite thing to do. It was an amazing experience. The best week of my life was Sundance.

You got a ton of support there.
I owe a lot to the programmers at Sundance, and I think John Cooper really got behind Concussion along with Trevor Groth, John Nein, Shari Frilot, Kim Yutani, Caroline Libresco…all of them. I was fortunate because at the beginning I thought, well, there are eight women directors in competition and I’m just one of them. The token gay girl or whatever. Throughout that week what I learned was that I wasn’t the token anything. I was pushed to be my own thing in many ways. They were so incredibly generous about talking about the film. They pushed me to USA Today…it was insane! We got a lot of great publicity. When Radius came and wanted to distribute the film we thought, “This is a miracle!” This just doesn’t happen. That was the best week ever. (laughs)

The film is about suburbia and feminism, but it’s about more than that. What’s at the core of the film?
I believe that finding one’s self is the subject of one’s life. Clarity. I think that’s at the core of the film for me. Many will find a take on marriage. I think we have to look at ourselves and our partners from time to time and assess what we want to do with the rest of our lives. I think the aspirations of somebody who’s 46 or 43 are very different from somebody who’s in their mid 20’s. I think that when I say that, people in my state of advanced age sort of start nodding their heads. We’ve gone through a lot of the milestones already. We’ve seen our children born, we’ve made some money. But still, there’s an emptiness. If you’re sacrificing yourself to find legitimacy, sometimes that can take its toll. I think those are some of the themes in the film. I think it’s something people like to talk about. It feeds the soul a little bit.

It’s a personal, intimate film, but I think everybody can relate to something in there.
Well, that’s the bet. I think the absence of the male figure in the film makes it sort of relatable for men. I think they feel very vindicated when they watch the film. They might feel titillated, which I love. It’s great, because the film is about sexuality and finding what makes you tick, sexually. Also, it’s a good film for people to look at two people together and find that it’s not always about gender dynamics. It’s about when two people stop having sex and what that looks like in a marriage.

There’s this thing called the Bechdel Test. If two women characters in a work of fiction talk to each other about something other than a man, it passes. Concussion passes!
I’ve never heard about that!

I think films like this are really valuable by this measure.
Thank you. My approach to subject matter is that it has to speak to me. I’m thinking about all the films I want to do, and I don’t think that issue would’ve even come up. All of the things that turn me on aren’t those old kind of ideas. It’s very interesting. There are two things that can be done. One, we can have more women talking to men about their issues, and two, we can have women talk to each other about things that aren’t about men. I don’t know…I just feel like people should do their work. I love men and I love talking about them. I think they’re wonderfully interesting creatures, just like women. In this case, it’s a personal film. Some of the themes are very much about empowerment, and her sexual goals did not involve men, so it was just a matter of what turned her on. It has a lot to do with being gay, certainly. There are absolutely tons of layers, like the fight for legitimacy and the toll that it can take when it’s really all about money and a house in the suburbs. Those are the gay issues in the film. When people say it’s not a gay film, I want to be like, “Well, maybe you’re not that straight of an audience.” You know what I mean? It has a lot of gay themes, and it has a universality about it that a lot of people seem to find.

I want to get into how you shoot intimacy. At my screening, there were some gasps, some…
Squirming?

Yes, some squirming.
I can see that you’re seeing something in your mind right now. What is it exactly? I’m interested. What was the squirmy part?

I’m picturing the scene with the young student sitting in a chair and Robin kneels down in front of her. A lot of people in the theater looked very, very nervous.
Do you remember your first kiss?

Yes.
That’s what it was. Robin and I both knew that that scene was about her first kiss. This is a woman who’s so shut down that she starts over again in many ways. I approached the whole thing as a big orgasm. There’s a build to it. It goes back to the very beautiful woman in the film who seduces Robin. That moment where she pulls Robin to her and it’s almost like Robin is a walker. She’s like stone. I was like, “You’re a column. You’re stone. You don’t know what you’re doing or how this all works anymore.” By the time Robin gets to the [student], it really is her first kiss. She learns a little more until she finds her “animal” self.

Talk a bit about Robin and her performance.
Early on, we thought about the arc of the character. I told her that the character punishes herself with exercise, and Robin came back three months later and she had all these muscles on her and lost all this weight. I was scared when I saw her. She’s a very tall woman, and she was a size zero. At one point, I could see the sinew in her back during the shower scene, and it was kind of sad. Sometimes, that sexiness almost became a look of hunger and desperation. As the film goes on, she finds a way to satiate her hunger. She knew that going in, and she created that arc beautifully. She’s a brilliant person and a wonderful collaborative partner. I don’t know that the film would be anything without her.

What were you looking for when you were casting that role?
I wanted to create an immersive experience. I feel like our culture has gotten so conservative that we’re afraid to go there, and I wanted someone to be able to go there with me. I said, “This isn’t going to be an expensive project, but it’s going to be expensive to your soul.” The way I wanted to do this was the way directors of the golden age of film did it–with their whole heart. I wasn’t afraid, but Robin was afraid. As we talked, she became less afraid. She can go there. That’s the beautiful thing about her. She’s just a well–there are no limits to what she can do. When I realized that, I knew we had something special because that satisfied my urge and hunger to go there creatively, and I think hers as well.

Will you talk a bit about David Kruta, your DP, and the look of the film? The colors are great.
I love to talk about David. He was a camera operator, a DIT by trade, and he shot some shorts. I loved his reel, and the thing I loved about him most was that he knew, technically, how to achieve the looks that we both wanted. The type of framing we wanted. The thing I love about him was that sometimes he saved me from myself. I’m a big fan of alternative framing and kind of “going there”. I think David really knew what this piece was, and he shot what the piece needed to be rather than some of the kooky ideas that I had. I really appreciated his steadiness throughout the process. In the chaos, when you’re doing that amount of acting, you’re doing that amount of directing and you’re really getting into these characters, you need somebody steady and somebody who can help in that way. David was always ready. We dared a little bit with the color. We took some chances. I find that a lot of digital is looking a little too creamy. We were encouraged by our producer to find the look that we wanted, so we really heightened blacks and played with that quite a bit. I think we came to a look that we felt was important for the character and the tone of the piece. I don’t know that I would make another film that looks exactly like that–it’s not necessarily going to be my way–but I felt that this piece deserved that look because of who she was.

After writing and directing your debut film, are you still open to doing films that you don’t both write and direct?
Sure. I’m a collaborator. I didn’t grow up in a world where I could call the shots. I grew up in a world where I was serving clients. That really helped make this film better. I was able to listen to my producer Rose and my editor, executive producer, and collaborator Anthony Cupo. I was very, very involved in collaboration. Rose and I would rewrite scenes, Robin would help rewrite scenes. We really played with it, and that’s something that you have to do in commercial work. You have to serve many masters. I believe in listening to people and making decisions on how to put the puzzle pieces together. I think I’d be really good at helping guide the voice of another writer. It’s something I’m definitely interested in doing.

How does it feel to have the film screening in San Francisco at Frameline?
I always get choked up when anything involves community of any kind. I’m a part of many communities–I’m a part of a suburban community with my friends and I’m part of a Jewish community–but the one that’s the most important for my soul is the gay community. It’s an incredibly important moment for the film and for us as a team. We’re absolutely thrilled to be here.

Following an event in Russia documented in the HBO Doc Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, in which members of the feminist punk rock group Pussy Riot performed a guerrilla-style anti-Putin rock show in an Orthodox cathedral in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, passed a “Gay Propaganda” law that fines or even imprisons anyone who offends people of faith by providing information about homosexuality to minors.

Anti-gay sentiment in Russia is quite prevalent amongst the Russian people today, despite the government decriminalizing homosexuality in 1993 (after 60 years of homosexuality being considered a crime following a ruling by the Soviet government under Joseph Stalin in 1933.) In a recent poll, it was found that nearly half of Russians believe members of the LGBT community shouldn’t be afforded the same rights as straight citizens.

In the past week, gay rights protesters have been embroiled in a heated battle on the street level, resulting in violent attacks from rival anti-gay protesters with no police to intercept the beatings (via http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22862210). The reaction of the Western world to the law has been unsurprisingly negative, especially since Russia will be hosting the G-20 Summit and the Winter Olympics in 2014.

Tomorrow, Friday, Septmber 13^th, Before You Know It, an American documentary by director PJ Raval about the lives of gay seniors, will be traveling overseas and screening at the Saratov Sufferings International Film Festival in Saratov, Russia amid the turbulent political climate surrounding the polarizing Gay Propaganda law. The film, which premiered at this year’s SXSW, follows three aging men who cope with the many challenges that come with both being gay and being elderly in America. We saw it at the San Francisco International Film festival and enjoyed it, and we also had an illuminating conversation with both director PJ Raval and Dennis Creamer, one of the three central subjects of the doc.

Before You Know It is a unique, revealing, and inspirational look into the lives of three gay men who have lived through some of the most monumental shifts in gay rights in America, including the recent legalization of gay marriage in several US states. Hopefully, tomorrow’s screening of the documentary, a window into the worlds of three wonderful, fascinating people, will help to move the needle in favor of the Russian LGBT community. The war Vladimir Putin is waging on homosexuals is terrifying, but you can never underestimate the power and influence of cinema on the psyche of a nation. Mr. Raval and his subjects’ film will, at the very least, spark a healthy, critical discussion about the LGBT community that will hopefully constitute a change of Russia’s frightening gay rights policies.

For more information on the film and additional screenings, visit beforeyouknowitfilm.com