This is the second vertical AI BL drama I've sat through, and honestly I went in knowing better. I had it on while I was doing cardio at the gym, and what struck me was just how much the plot echoed the last one I watched. Same step brother romance angle, same mystery girlfriend showing up near the end, same extra guy pining after one of the leads. Genuinely the only thing going for it was the runtime, the whole thing wrapped up in forty five minutes flat. The setup kicks off with Finn moving schools because his mom just married into money. He finds out his new step brother Aiden goes to the same place, and he's warned to keep his distance from him. Their first run in at school is rocky, just like you'd expect, but there's this odd pull between them neither can shake off. Finn keeps telling himself not to read into it because Aiden's straight and openly homophobic. Things shift when some kids start bullying Finn and the student council president, Ryan, steps in to ...
I have mentioned tis many times. Documentaries are not easy to make. Striking a balance between information and still making it interesting enough for the viewer to be interested is not an easy thing at all. In Chile, people living with HIV fear stigma, and often conceal their condition and remain silent about what they are going through. This is My Face explores what happens when a range of men living with the virus open up about the illness that changed their life trajectories.
We meet 4 individuals who have secretly been living in Chile with the stigma of being HIV positive and have stayed silent about the issue. An 18 year old fine arts student, A president of a wellbeing group for HIV people, a wanna young poet working in a stationary shop, and finally a 45 year old teacher and a gay activist. Using autobiographical photography and reflexive techniques through cinematic storytelling, the maker takes us through the journey of these individuals. The photographic portraits represent their painful memories and feelings, a process which helps them challenge years of silence, shame, and misrepresentation. It's a different form of story telling to be honest where practice-led research can produce emotionally moving and politically relevant films that are accessible to a discerning audience. The pictures are supposed to educate us about the impactful stories and ‘statements’ produced by the men through their photographic projects without us being sentimental about it. Unfortunately, personally for me, this form of story telling didn't work for me. I was unable to really connect and empathize with these individuals.
The story is powerful and a very very important documentary to be told. People, not just in Chile, but everywhere need to be educated on what HIV is, what people living wit it go through because of it. Good as a documentary, if you can keep yourself invested, but just not interesting enough to want to stay on watching it and get to know more. (3.5/10)

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