Closet Monster

AMERICAN CRIME’s Connor Jessup stars as Oscar, a young man entering adulthood, who is obsessed with designing and photographing the wild monster make-up he dreams up while nursing a crush-so-bad-it-hurts on bad boy Wilder (Aliocha Schneider), his hardware store co-worker. Struggling to find his place in the world with emotional scars left by his childhood witnessing of a gay bashing, the neglect of his distracted mother and troubled father, and the burgeoning surreal nightmares that are rising to the surface as surely as his throbbing queer desire, he finds solace in his talking pet hamster Buffy, who is voiced by Isabella Rossellini. The result is a swirling, visual kaleidoscope, spearheaded by Jessup’s masterful performance that artfully captures the often chaotic transition between adolescence and adulthood.Writer-director Stephen Dunn’s debut feature was awarded the Jury Prize at the Toronto International Film Festival. “An accomplished, courageously strange debut.” – The Hollywood Reporter

Event website