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Thirteen or So Minutes: A Quiet Revolution in the Span of a Coffee Break

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13 or so minutes Nick Soper - 13 or so minutesShort films often struggle to justify their existence, either feeling like a rushed concept or an overlong sketch. William Branden Blinn’s award-winning Thirteen or So Minutes avoids both pitfalls by distilling a lifetime of confusion, discovery, and sudden intimacy into its brief runtime. This isn’t just a snapshot; it’s a profound seismic event that happens quietly, in a single room, between two strangers.

The setup is deceptively simple and, let’s be honest, instantly intriguing: Lawrence Jefferies (Soper) and Hugh Greerey (Salas) are two straight men who have just met. Both have a history of girlfriends. Now, a mere handful of minutes later—thirteen or so, if you want to be precise—they are left staring at the ceiling, or maybe at the wall, grappling with the fact that they’ve just spontaneously had sex.

The film’s true genius lies in what follows. Once the physical act is over, the real intimacy begins. The narrative pivots entirely to the conversation, the hesitant, vulnerable, and often comical dialogue between the two men as they attempt to map out the uncharted territory of their shared experience verbally. This isn’t about sensationalising a sudden moment of fluidity; it’s about the raw, honest human response to discovering a desire you never knew you possessed.

Soper and Salas are excellent. They play the moment not for shock, but for genuine, bewildered chemistry. You feel their confusion, their panic, and the underlying, undeniable strong desire that the Wikipedia premise refers to. Director and writer Blinn understands that the biggest stakes often exist not in explosions or car chases, but in the terrifying moment when you have to admit something true and unexpected about yourself.

By winning prizes at festivals like the Rainbow Film Festival, the film proves that its exploration of social and sexuality issues resonates powerfully. It suggests that attraction isn’t always a rigidly defined path, but sometimes a sudden, inexplicable detour. Thirteen or So Minutes is a thoughtful and essential watch that manages to convey more about the messy, beautiful complexities of human sexuality in fourteen minutes than most feature-length dramas do in two hours. A great piece of work.

 

Director: William Branden Blinn 

Writer: William Branden Blinn 

Stars: Nick Soper, Carlos Salas 

Running Time: 14 minutes

 

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August (Août) – Movie Review

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Review: August (Août) – A Fever Dream of Queer Youth and Unspoken Longing
By David McFarlane

Aout or AugustThere’s something elusive, almost spectral, about August (Août), Louis Thines’ short film about youth, identity, and the electric charge of uncertain desire. Like the haze of a sun-drenched French summer, it is beautiful to look at but often slips through your fingers the moment you try to hold onto it.

Thines, who writes, directs, and stars, gives us Louis — a young man drifting between adolescence and adulthood, unsure whether the world he’s entering will accept the parts of him still forming. He visits his best friend Roxane in the south of France, and we are drawn immediately into the languid rhythms of long days, warm light, and the emotionally loaded quiet between people who are not quite saying what they feel.

Enter Jérémy (played with understated magnetism by Jérémy Papallardo), a stranger met at a party who seems to reflect all that Louis is unsure of in himself. Their interactions, captured through soft, intimate cinematography, shimmer with possibility. It’s less about dialogue and more about proximity — bodies not touching, glances exchanged, silences that thrum with meaning.

And then — a kiss. Or rather, the suggestion of one. A brief, pivotal moment when Jérémy leans in and Louis recoils, not with revulsion, but confusion. We hold our breath. And then… nothing. The moment vanishes, like a wave that never breaks.

It’s in this unresolved space that August both finds its mood and loses its momentum. The film never quite allows us to know what Louis wants, or even who he is — and perhaps that’s the point. But while ambiguity can be powerful, here it feels more like absence. As a viewer, I felt not only suspended but slightly abandoned.

Technically, though, August is stunning. From the golden palette of late afternoons to the sound design that captures the lazy hum of a southern summer, Thines has crafted a world I believed in completely. Every frame feels lived-in, every gesture natural, every moment held just long enough to suggest there is more beneath the surface.Aout or August

But narrative, like desire, needs direction. And here, August hesitates when it most needs to speak. The queer experience, especially in youth, is often defined by silences — those moments when we don’t say what we feel, or don’t know how. Thines understands this deeply. But in the end, I wanted a little more certainty, even if it was just emotional honesty.

August is a film about the in-between — between boyhood and manhood, friendship and love, self-assurance and fear. It is gorgeously observed, but narratively restrained. Whether that restraint is poetic or simply withholding will depend on the viewer. For me, it was a beautiful near-miss: tender, evocative, and frustratingly incomplete.

Still, I’d rather a filmmaker risk saying too little than too much. And I’ll be watching Thines’ future work with great interest. He has an eye — and a heart — worth paying attention to.

Aout or August

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The Letter Men – Movie Review

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Review: The Letter Men – A Quiet Masterpiece of Queer Remembrance

The Letter MenIt’s not every day that a story finds you — especially one as moving and improbable as that of The Letter Men. But that’s precisely what happened to director Andy Vallentine. In his own words, he stumbled across the love story of Gilbert Bradley and Gordon Bowsher while scrolling online, yet what followed was no casual discovery. It became a deeply personal pilgrimage to honour lives lived in secret, with love expressed in ink but forbidden in the flesh.

 

…No conception of what our love is…
 
…How far away we seem from the rest of the world…

 

Gilbert Bradley kept Gordon’s letters until he died in 2007, and they were then rediscovered in 2015. bringing their love story to light.

Based on the largest surviving collection of queer love letters from the Second World War, The Letter Men does more than dramatise a historical romance. It gives voice to the silenced — not in anger, but in reverence. Vallentine’s Director’s Statement reveals not only the historical weight of the story but also the emotional and ethical responsibility he felt in telling it. This isn’t opportunistic filmmaking; it’s stewardship.

The casting of Garrett Clayton as Gilbert and Matthew Postlethwaite as Gordon brings authenticity and tenderness to roles that could so easily have slipped into caricature. But under Vallentine’s hand, every gesture, glance, and silence feels earned. This is a film about longing — not just the yearning between two men separated by war, but the aching for recognition, dignity, and permanence in a world determined to forget them.The Letter Men

It’s also a visually rich experience. Oren Soffer’s cinematography is painterly, with the production and costume design capturing 1940s England not in sepia-toned nostalgia, but with a lived-in texture. Even the visual effects — subtle as they are — seem to serve the memory of these men, never overshadowing the human drama at the core.

What struck me most, however, wasn’t the historical significance — which is undeniable — but the contemporary resonance. As Vallentine notes, telling diverse, underrepresented stories is not just a moral imperative, but the very reason for making art at all. In a cultural moment where LGBTQ+ histories are still at risk of erasure or dismissal, The Letter Men becomes more than a film. It becomes testimony.

It’s a rare thing to watch a director so transparently moved by his subject and so determined to let it speak for itself. Andy Vallentine doesn’t just tell Gilbert and Gordon’s story; he listens to it. That humility, that attentiveness, is what elevates this short film into something unforgettable.

In the end, The Letter Men isn’t only about love letters. It is a love letter — to the past, to the possibility of queer futures, and to all those who wrote their truths down in hope, never knowing if anyone would ever read them.

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