''Liam'' is a 2018 first-person

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

directed by

Isidore Bethel Isidore Bethel is a French-American filmmaker whom ''Filmmaker'' named one of the "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in 2020. The films he edits, directs, and produces use filmmaking to make sense of overwhelming experiences and touch on recurr ...

. It follows the director's own story as he moves to

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

after his best friend Liam dies back in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. Through documentary,

performance A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Management science In the work place ...

, and stop motion

animation Animation is a method by which image, still figures are manipulated to appear as Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent cel, celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited ...

, a ghostly portrait emerges of Liam, prompting Isidore to question his relationships with his parents and his boyfriend in Paris. The film premiered at the Boston

LGBT Film Festival An LGBT film festival or queer film festival is a specialized film festival that has an LGBTQ+ focus in its selection of films. LGBT film festivals often screen films that would struggle to find a mainstream audience and are often activist spaces ...

and received the Paris LGBTQ+ Film Festival's Documentary Jury Prize in 2018. The

francophone French became an international language in the Middle Ages, when the power of the Kingdom of France made it the second international language, alongside Latin. This status continued to grow into the 18th century, by which time French was the l ...

streaming service Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...

Tënk acquired the film in 2019 for streaming. The film met a modest but favorable reception: critics noted that "Bethel is most definitely a very talented cinematic voice" and characterized the film as "brilliant" and as a "documentary that's universal for how it questions grief and powerful for its analysis of the legacies that survivors bear."

References

External links

* 2018 films 2018 documentary films 2018 LGBT-related films American coming-of-age films Autobiographical documentary films Films shot in Atlanta Films shot in France Films shot in Paris French coming-of-age films 2010s French-language films LGBT-related coming-of-age films 2010s English-language films 2010s American films 2010s French films American LGBT-related documentary films French LGBT-related documentary films {{2010s-documentary-film-stub