Hey You
2019 · 5m · UK
Directed by Jared Watmuff
Tones: melancholic, tense
Two men exchange messages on a gay dating app and prepare for a hook-up, but a devastating parallel reveals that while one lives freely in London, the other hides his identity in Chechnya during the anti-gay purge.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Grindr-meets-Chechnya pivot in under five minutes — it's a gut-punch by design, and the gut-punch genre rarely earns the punch. But the brevity helps, and the rage is real.
Watmuff weaponizes the dating-app interface to fold London's casual freedoms against Chechnya's persecution — a rhetorical hairpin turn that is the entire reason the film exists. The structure is its argument.
A 4:43 dating-app two-hander that pivots from London hookup banter to Chechnya purge in under five minutes — that compression demands surgical editing to land the gut-punch without feeling cheap. Iris Prize selection and a Best Micro Budget win suggest the structural risk paid off.
Reviews
The kind of film that leaves you in a solemn trance as the credits roll — the way it transforms the mundane into something violent and alien is why it's so powerful.
A confronting look at the dangers of meeting up with men on apps like Grindr, yet also has something very real to say about the purge of gay men in Chechnya — disturbing and scary.
Festivals
- Iris Prize 2019
- Kino London Short Film Festival 2020, Best Micro Budget Film & Best LGBTQ+ Short
- Sunday Shorts Film Festival 2019
- Pink Apple Film Festival