Niño bonito
2015 · 32m · Estados Unidos
Directed by Cameron Thrower
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Sean, a bullied teenager struggling with his sexuality and his devout Christian father's rejection, meets Katie, a prostitute who helps him see that the true light is inside him and that family can be chosen.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise wants to be provocative—prostitute as spiritual guide to a gay kid—but it's executed with such earnest gentleness that it becomes exactly the kind of consensus-friendly LGBTQ+ fable everyone expects; Thrower should've leaned into the provocation or abandoned it entirely.
Thrower positions this squarely in the indie coming-of-age lineage (think early Sollett, late Reichardt), and the formal restraint—the refusal to aestheticize trauma—shows real curatorial awareness of how to hold tender material without sentimentalizing it.
The film's entire emotional architecture pivots on the casting and performance chemistry between Sean and Katie; that relationship feels earned rather than scripted, which is the one decision that prevents this from collapsing into well-meaning cliché.