Lukas Dhont is bringing a gay love story to the World War I trenches, and the inspiration behind it is genuinely striking. The Belgian director stumbled across archival black-and-white photographs of soldiers performing theatrical shows for their fellow troops. In some of those performances, men crossdressed to play roles ranging from can-can dancers to other female characters.
That discovery lit the spark for “Coward,” Dhont’s upcoming queer WWI romance. The director has spoken about how this hidden slice of history felt completely absent from mainstream cinema, a story sitting right there in the archives but never told on screen.
Dhont previously directed “Close,” which earned an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature Film, so expectations for this one are already high.
A queer love story buried inside one of history’s deadliest wars deserves exactly this kind of film.
Source: Original Article
