This Indian series is being sold as a story about a gay man falling for his straight best friend but honestly, at its heart, it's really about friendship and what friendship can look like when it gets complicated and messy and emotionally loaded. It's available on the YouTube channel of Last Leaf Pictures, seven episodes of about 30 minutes each. I had mixed feelings throughout and a big part of that comes down to how I felt about one of the lead characters, but more on that in a bit. Anshul and Kavith are the two men at the centre of everything. They first meet on a train heading to Delhi, both of them not really ready to go back to their hometowns. They get off midway, turn around and head back to Mumbai to give themselves one more shot at the life they want there. Anshul is an aspiring actor with a young son back in Delhi living with his grandmother. Kavith is gay, freshly out of yet another relationship, his 17th by his own count over the years. The two strike up this unusu...
Adam was born female in a very conservative Egyptian family and always felt completely out of place in his own body and life. His mum would constantly remind him to be more ladylike, calling him princess, all of that. There's a point where things feel hopeful because Adam falls in love with a girl, but that girl thinks they're just two lesbians in love and she can't really get her head around the whole transition side of things. What follows involves a hint of betrayal from that person and then a sexual assault that honestly just torments you as a viewer. The turning point comes when Adam finally types into a search bar, can the soul of a man be trapped in the body of a woman, and suddenly finds this whole online community of people who feel exactly the same way. That moment where he finally feels like he exists is so quietly powerful. He holds onto that and eventually asks for British protection. The film then takes us inside that waiting period in Glasgow, two years stuck in a room, dredging up memories from Egypt while still having to hide who he is just to survive. The woman handling his asylum case is your classic bureaucratic villain, doing everything she can to block him at every turn.
What makes this film really special is the way it's presented. The minimalist theatrical setting genuinely makes you feel like you're inside Adam's head, like every barrier between you and his raw thoughts has just been removed. There's this really striking device where his reflection sometimes shifts into the face of the woman the world saw him as on the outside, and it's used so well. The film keeps going back and forth between his inner world and how society perceived him and that contrast hits every single time. The scenes between Adam and his earlier female self are honestly at the heart of the whole thing and they get to the centre of the debate in this stylised theatrical way that really sticks with you. And the cinematic side of it is used really cleverly to show you how the world saw him versus how he saw himself. When you finally see present day Adam just walking through the snow in Glasgow after getting his refugee status, it genuinely feels like taking your first breath after holding it for way too long. The fact that the real Adam plays himself throughout the whole thing just makes everything hit so much harder. It's brave and charming and somehow they've taken this deeply personal story and made it feel relatable to anyone watching.
Just under an hour and honestly one of the more rewarding watches I've had in a while. Not enough people know this story exists and that's a shame. (7/10)
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