the way back home (2022)

“There are insidious emotions that sneak up on us. In a world that values money more than life, these feelings are ones we have all felt at one time or another.

Rose, the protagonist of the film, is a gay man working as a prostitute. We watch him go about his regular life, unable to break free from its cycle. The focus is not on the taboo of what he does but on how it affects him.

Rose inhabits the margins of society, he gives desperate and disenfranchised people access to one of life’s most basic needs: companionship. Yet his fate is inescapable and he himself is one of those people, so where does that leave him? who does he turn to? who can he turn to?

Hence the ascetic formal approach of the film. From the start, the film was built with the notion that entire scenes would play out in single static shots. The audience watching the realities of this life play out, mundanity and all, as if through a surveillance camera; detached and removed ever so slightly from the action.

The questions that are posed are left unanswered, lingering in the minds of the audience.”

-Tyler Jay Alan (Director)

POSTER by Mia Saldanha