My Dear Boy
2022 · 5m · USA
Directed by Leaf Lieber
Genres: experimental, LGBTQ+, romance
Tones: melancholic, tender
Within the first few seconds of meeting each other, two men experience the rise and collapse of their destined relationship through a surreal, non-linear journey. The film compresses an entire love affair — first sparks, intimacy, conflict, and loss — into five minutes of hyperreal, dreamlike imagery.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Most films about gay love get precious or self-serious; this one compresses five years into five minutes and somehow *gains* weight instead of losing it—the surrealism isn't decoration, it's the only honest way to show how fast you can fall and shatter.
Lieber's non-linear structure echoes the fragmented temporality of experimental romance cinema, yet the hyperreal montage sits uneasily between avant-garde abstraction and emotional accessibility—formally ambitious, though the emotional register occasionally strains against its own conceptual rigor.
The genius move isn't the premise—it's casting a non-actor digital artist opposite an experienced performer and letting that friction become the film's rhythm, where every moment of uncertainty in his eyes reads as the relationship's own instability.
Reviews
The film reveals how we recall and romanticize our first loves as divine creatures regardless of the pain they may have activated within us, and how letting go of them is to let go of a belief we held onto with our dear lives.
Featured among the LGBTQ+ highlights at Tribeca Festival 2022.
Festivals
- Tribeca Film Festival 2022
- NFFTY (National Film Festival for Talented Youth) 2022