Refugee's Welcome

"A few years ago I was displaced from the country I lived in, due to wars that are nothing to do with me and are out of my control. I was forced to travel for many months until I managed to end up in a country so completely different from my own that I never knew how I could see it as a home. Until one day I met a man."

One of the most moving confessions ever received on XConfessions — and the one that inspired Erika Lust to create the platform's first gay film.

Directed by Bruce LaBruce, Refugees Welcome follows a Syrian refugee living in Germany who stumbles across a poetry reading. Neither speaks the other's language. Across the room, something passes between them anyway — recognition, desire, the particular electricity of two people finding each other in the most unlikely place. Too shy to approach, he walks away.

That won't be the last time they meet.

Brutal, gentle, sexy, romantic, and earth-shatteringly moving, this film explores how differences become similarities, and how in a world being turned upside down, love and desire remain the strongest forces of all.

"Now the phrase Refugees Welcome has an entirely new meaning for me."