Beach Rats (Omu)

Summer on Coney Island. Teenage Frankie drifts through his life. During the day, he hangs with his friends on the beach, goes training and smokes grass. But neither his macho-like, latently aggressive buddies nor Simone, with whom he begins an affair, seem to really interest him. The only place Frankie can speak openly about his feelings and sexual desires is the anonymous chat room where he writes with older gay men at night. After some hesitation, he begins to meet with people from the net and ventures into the cruising areas on the riverside. But when his buddies threaten to discover his secret, Frankie must make a radical decision... In her second feature film, American independent director Eliza Hittman tells a story of homosexual awakening and self-denial on the outermost edge of New York, where social problems such as unemployment and juvenile delinquency are just as everyday as a one-sided idea of masculinity.