Acts of Love

Acts of Love is a 2021 documentary-fiction hybrid film by Isidore Bethel and Francis Leplay that premiered in Hot Docs's Nightvision section, which focuses on future "cult classics." Plot When his relationship with an older man in Mexico starts to wane, Bethel, who performs as himself in the film, travels to Chicago. He chats with hundreds of men on dating apps and invites them to make a film with him. A dozen meet him for an interview, and four agree to write and perform in a fictional film that their original conversations inspired. Meanwhile, passages combining still images and voiceover from Bethel recount memories about the former lover. Throughout, the filmmaker's mother phones him to critique and ridicule her son's unusual project. Describing his collaboration with Bethel in an interview with the Mexican newspaper Reforma, Leplay said, "The first thing I asked him was, 'how spontaneous were these auditions?' And far from being acted, they were quite natural. There wasn't a specific script, but that's how the story came about." Production The film received screenwriting and postproduction support from France's Île-de-France region, Eurodoc, and the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival's work-in-progress lab.