Young Hearts

Young Hearts, dir. Anthony Schatteman, 2024 Belgium/Netherlands, 97 min., in Flemish (Belgian Dutch) and French with subtitles, with small amounts of German and English 💖

Friday, June 21, 2024, 6:30 PM, Palace of Fine Arts Theatre

not available in the Digital Screening Room streaming encore

🏆 Frameline48 Jury Award: honorable mention, Outstanding First Narrative Feature

Young Hearts

Elias (Lou Goossens, pictured left) is plodding his way through middle school in a farm town in the north of Belgium. Just before school starts, a new family moves in across the street, including Alexander (Marius De Saeger, pictured right), who is in the same class at school. They become friends, but Elias is drawn to Alexander in a deeper way, but he is already bullied quite a bit at school and isn’t sure what his family will think. Alexander is fairly open about being gay, but Elias still has to wrestle with his own feelings. Goossens gives you a visceral sense of the butterflies in his stomach, the frog in his throat, and the whirlwind in his brain, plus the pressure building to the bursting point if he can’t talk to someone about what he’s feeling. 

There are plenty of funny moments in Young at Heart, and it’s lighthearted on the whole, but there are also some powerful tearjerker moments. It’s a fresh take on the coming out/coming-of-age story, with much less of the anxiety of many such films. It’s a beautiful film, and received an enthusiastic standing ovation, definitely a MUST SEE. Strand Releasing shows it as “coming soon” to DVD and Blu-Ray, but the release date has not yet been announced; check the link below for updates.

Parental advisory: this film contains no adult material, and is safe for teens and tweens. The relationship between the protagonists is sweet and affectionate, but not in any way sexual, its depiction entirely age-appropriate. I would guess it would get a PG or at worst a PG-13 rating in the U.S.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram: @Young_Hearts_Film • Facebook • preview • Strand Releasing • Wikipedia • Rotten Tomatoes: [not yet scored, but currently 4 out of 4 reviews positive] •