What does it take to show yourself?
An intimate short film, Yourself is a sentimental look at queer kids and the vulnerability it takes to be known.
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Credits
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- Production Company Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg
- Director Thilo Gundelach
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Credits
powered by
- Production Company Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg
- Director Thilo Gundelach
- Composer Ruby Haunt
Credits
powered by
- Production Company Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg
- Director Thilo Gundelach
- Composer Ruby Haunt
Featuring two young men in high school, this sweetly earnest short film showcases subtle emotional queues of queerness that resonate with authenticity and kindness.
Yourself is intimate and reserved at the same time. Focusing on a young man as he deals with a struggle of self-acceptance, the film gives space for the main character to define himself. It’s a slice-of-life short, giving us a snippet of what this young man is going through as he comes to terms with his sexuality.
There are equal measures of anger and tenderness in both the story and the filming. As an example, during a baseball game, the main character, a blond, gets into a fight with another young man who calls him a faggot. The main character, punching down, is pulled away by a curly-haired brunette, and the shots at this point become soft and warm, focusing on hands and faces and the way the boys’ bodies twist on the ground. The sensuality of the film continues into a shower and then pulls back into a car where the main character and the brunette are talking about the upcoming prom.
Despite reservations, the main character does eventually make it to prom, not in a tux but in jeans. At the end of the film, it’s implied that he confesses his feelings for the brunette. The entire work is very neatly edited and well-shot, and there’s a particular point-of-view at about 3:50 where we watch a young man (presumably the brunette) walk up a driveway towards a building. The camera lies in the car as it drives past and the voyeurism is intense as we eventually rest on an extreme close-up on the blond boy.
Both soft and direct, the film allows the characters room to breathe, with student director, Thilo Gundelach, showing exceptional maturity in both how he handles the subject of sexuality and the camera. Taking cues from auteurs like Luca Guadagnino and Barry Jenkins, Gundelach showcases the duality of anger and vulnerability in queer youth with a deft directorial hand.
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