Two Little Boys
2020 · 13m · España
Directed by Farbod Khoshtinat
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Tyler is a high school boy who has suffered physical abuse and violence by one of his classmates for years. He does not understand why the bullying and harassment are constant: they were friends, they loved each other, but something changed.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the bullying narrative to pivot into revenge or catharsis—Khoshtinat refuses both, which is almost radical in its restraint, but the film still lands in familiar melancholic territory that other scouts would've already picked.
The formal control here is assured—the editing breathes with the accumulation of small violences—and it positions itself squarely in the lineage of queer coming-of-age introspection, though without the formal innovation that would make it essential viewing.
The whole film turns on a single choice: the decision to keep both boys' interior lives visible and sympathetic rather than collapsing one into villain, and that restraint—letting the audience hold the complexity instead of resolving it—is what makes this small story genuinely unsettling.