Dino Hart
2024 · 12m · USA
Directed by Lizzie Mayes
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, tender
Set against the backdrop of an anti-LGBTQ+ "Don't Say Gay" bill moving through the state legislature, twelve-year-old Dino begins to uncover a hidden truth about the long-lost father they have always wondered about. As childhood curiosity collides with a hostile political moment, Dino navigates identity, family, and acceptance in a queer coming-of-age portrait produced by Hibernation Films.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Here's the thing—pairing a kid's private queer awakening with legislative dread could've been heavy-handed, but Mayes lets them breathe in the same frame without screaming about it, which is genuinely more subversive than any sermon.
The film understands its formal debt to the American coming-of-age tradition while deliberately situating itself in the emergency of a specific political moment; that restraint and timeliness in conversation is exactly the kind of considered positioning that defines contemporary queer cinema.
The decision to let Dino's curiosity about their father unfold in real time—unfiltered, intimate—while the legislative threat hums quietly in the background creates a tonal precision that elevates what could've been an issue piece into something genuinely felt.
Festivals
- Indie Short Fest 2024, Honorable Mention