TITE: Soft

CLUB 18+122 min

Synopsis

Toronto’s queer nightlife is all sweat, clubs and glitter — but Julian, Otis and Tony are stuck on the fringes. Exuberant and rambunctious queer kids, the trio spend their summer break making mayhem together and not talking about the underlying tension in their home lives; while Tony gets along with his family, Otis isn’t out to his religious father, and Julian is a runaway taking refuge with a trans woman named Dawn.

All they want is to make the most of their freedom and be accepted into the secret world of adults, but their freewheeling youth dramatically clashes with reality when Dawn goes missing. The trio learn quickly that all queer adults really have is their community, and they’ll have to count on each other to get through this crisis. This hidden gem deserves recognition as one of the great queer coming of age films, marrying the stark transition between queer youth and adulthood of Moonlight with the juvenile tongue-in-cheek humour of Nowhere.

Carried by the sincere chemistry and electric performances of its teen leads, including trans actress Zion Matheson in her film debut, Soft perfectly encapsulates trans youth’s struggle to be heard as peers, protected as kids, and not grow up too fast.

This screening features fully subtitled spoken dialogue.

PRE-FEATURE SHORT:

Adult Child (2024, Norway, 24') [S]
With humor and vulnerability, the director reaches out to their distant father as the two of them investigate what makes up a masculine identity.