No. 26 · Short Film
LOVE LANGUAGE
Directed by zapoida francis
Germany · 18 min
LOVE LANGUAGE is a queer short film series set in Berlin, exploring modern love and identity through music, visuals, and storytelling.
Streams 21 September 2026 to 28 September 2026, Berlin time. Every ticket is one Audience Award vote.
Trailer
About the film
A love story told through five episodes, each exploring a different Love Language.
LOVE LANGUAGE follows Angie, 19 year old gender-nonconforming Berliner navigating bipolar disorder, addiction and a fierce desire for freedom, and Lucas, South American football player raised with rigid ideas of masculinity. The two meet by chance on a summer subway ride and fall intensely for one another, entering a relationship neither of them has experienced before. As Angie embraces ethical non-monogamy and fluid identity, Lucas struggles with the weight of secrecy, peer pressure and his own unspoken sexuality.
What begins as a luminous, tender love quickly exposes the fault lines between their worlds. Angie’s need for openness clashes with Lucas’s fear of being seen; Lucas’s silence triggers Angie’s deepest insecurities. While the two try to learn each other’s “love languages”, compromises become harder to hold, jealousy turns into fear, and personal limits collide with societal expectations.
Content notes: Sexual content · Graphic violence · Substance use
- Runtime
- 18 min
- Category
- Short Film
- Country
- Germany
- Year
- 2024/2025
- Language
- English
- Aspect ratio
- 16:9
Stills
zapoida francis
Multimedia Artist based in Berlin, Germany. He contributes to the European art scene as a music producer, songwriter and performer, by collaborating internationally, integrating digital interactive content and audiovisual projects to his work.
— Director’s statement
My work moves between music, storytelling, and digital media, seeking forms that hold the contradictions of contemporary identity. Sound is often my entry point: intimate and universal, ideal for questioning how we connect and are perceived, balancing raw songwriting with experimental production. This blurring extends structurally: songs that behave like films, films that function like albums, interactive works pulling the audience into the process, resisting fixed categories, much like my own identity resists simplification.
Queer identity, mental health, and youth recur throughout my practice, not as subjects to explain but as lived realities shaping form. I'm drawn to tensions: nostalgia and futurity, expression and constraint, beauty and struggle, articulating what it feels like to live in-between, where freedom and precarity coexist.
Credits
- Directed by
- zapoida francis
- Written by
- zapoida francis
- Produced by
- Lola Love Chalmers
- Cinematography
- Illia Bluekach
- Editing
- Dilinna Afamefuna Ike
- Production design
- Jessica Charles
- Music
- zapoida francis
- Principal cast
- Elder Dias Gelo Felipe Katherine Cusack
- Also
- Maria Chiara Romanucci - Executive Producer zapoida francis - Executive Producer Illia Bluekach - Colorist Lola Love Chalmers - Assistant Director Oto Gvardjančič - Steady Cam Operator Daelan Dublado - 1AC Carlos Santoscoy - 2AC Iris Bodely - 2AC Mayarí - Set Designer Polina Ostapkevich - Make Up Artist Susi Domenge - Costumes Lissa Chaplin - Costumes Yannick Solandt - Gaffer Iris Bodely - Gaffer Noa Mouritzen-Ward - Gaffer Burt Burlington - Gaffer Stefanie Gringersh - Gaffer Jessica Charles - Production Assistant Leo Hoffmeiste - Production Assistant Simon W. Timm - Runner Nic Storm - Runner Nic Storm - Supporting Actor 1 Kuba Goleniewski - Supporting Actor 2 Odara Paiva - Supporting Actor 3 Desiré Desiré Kayij - Supporting Actor 4 Nayanathara Jay - Supporting Actor 5 Lola Love Chalmers - Casting Director zapoida francis - Casting Director Jemimah Muusha - Additional Recruiting Support Lola Love Chalmers - Location Manager Simon W. Timm - BTS
— Festivals and awards
Berlin International Underground Film Festival - Official Selection Singapore Film and Script Festival - BEST LGBTQIA+ FILM Award Winner
LOVE LANGUAGE is part of the Official Selection of the BIUFF Founding Edition 2026.