On My Way
2020 · 22m · Belgium
Directed by Sonam Larcin
Genres: drama, LGBTQ+, romance
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
The unexpected arrival of a Nigerian migrant in the Belgian countryside disrupts the fragile daily life of two men living a secret relationship — one of them closeted and married to a woman.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the Nigerian migrant to be the disruptor, the crisis — but Larcin flips it: the real destabilization is internal, already there, waiting. It's a quiet refusal to perform the rescue narrative we're all primed to want.
The film's formal restraint — its willingness to let silence and landscape do the emotional work — sits squarely in a lineage of European pastoral cinema that uses countryside as a space of reckoning rather than escape. This is cinema aware of what it's inheriting.
The decision to intercut between the two men's separate, ordinary routines before they collide — the small repetitions that reveal how much is being hidden — does the entire thematic work without a single expository line. That architecture is everything.
Reviews
A deep and meaningful story that stands out among queer short films.
Truly wonderful — the film assumes innocence without demanding proof of trustworthiness from the immigrant character.
Festivals
- Palm Springs International ShortFest 2021, Nominated — Bridging the Borders Award; Nominated — Best LGBTQ+ Short
- Iris Prize Festival 2020
- OUTshine Film Festival 2021
- Mostra FIRE!! Barcelona 2021