What Are We?
2024 · 14m · USA
Directed by Eileen Hanley
Genres: comedy, LGBTQ+, romance
Tones: humorous, tender, whimsical
Jess and Kayley, two platonic queer best friends with benefits (and both bottoms), have a threesome with the top of their dreams and try to define what their unorthodox relationship actually is.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone wants to make queer sex *serious* — a wound, a revelation, a three-act problem — so watching Hanley treat it as genuinely funny, genuinely light, genuinely *unresolved* feels like she's picked the lock on a room nobody else had permission to enter.
A film acutely aware of rom-com lineage while refusing its heterosexual grammar; Hanley's formal clarity — the way she lets silences breathe between the laughs — positions this thoughtfully within both comedy and queer cinema's ongoing conversation about form and feeling.
The film pivots entirely on Hanley's performance choice to play Jess as someone *completely unbothered* by the relationship's shapelessness, and that single attitude — that refusal to perform anxiety — dissolves what could've been a high-concept gimmick into something tender and unselfconscious.
Reviews
Multiple queer relationship dynamics played without crisis — Hanley normalizes non-traditional arrangements by showing they 'can be easy and simple' when everyone's on board.
Acquired by Tiny Scripted and racked up 50,000 views in its first week on YouTube — audiences clearly responded to the playful, non-judgmental take on queer relationship dynamics.
Festivals
- Cannes Indie Shorts Awards 2024, Semi-Finalist, Best Comedy
- LGBTQ+ Toronto Film Festival 2024, Best Romance Film; Best Screenplay
- San Francisco International Film Awards 2024, Best LGBTQ Film
- New York Film & Actress Awards 2024, Best LGBTQ Director