i really want him to... | Video Poem

"i really want him to love me" is a poetic and experimental short documentary that uses the framework of an audition to interrogate the norms that govern desire and access to acceptance. Through the perspective of a queer and racialized character who repeatedly attempts to render himself legible and desirable in the eyes of a symbolic jury, the film stages the internalization of the dominant gaze and the exhaustion it produces. Carried by performance and voice-over, the film follows a series of transformations that reveal the cost and limits of this pursuit of acceptance.