WATCH: Gay daddies fret over their family’s future in this sharp social satire
These gay dads attempt to "improve" their neighborhood to disastrous (and sharply funny) effect.
Gay couple Ben (Shlomi Bertonov) and Raz (Ariel Wolf) are very much in love. They’re still young, they have great jobs, and they live in a gorgeous apartment. They’re even making plans to start a family.
They’re also white, wealthy, and live in an “up-and-coming” neighborhood, a.k.a a part of the city with plenty of migrants and low-income housing. In other words, Ben and Raz are gentrifiers.
The couple is at the center of Israeli writer-director Idan Haguel’s Concerned Citizen, a pitch-black comedy all about privilege and the ways liberalism can often be a mask for unacknowledged prejudices.
This goes especially for Ben who feels guilty about his social standing, while simultaneously fretting over bringing his future child into a “safe” environment.
When he and his partner share the baby news with some friends, a simple question—”Are you going to raise them in this neighborhood?”—sends Ben’s mind reeling.
In an attempt to “improve” the community in his own little way, he decides to plant a tree. But things aren’t so simple. The tree kicks off a disastrous chain of events, involving Ben in the violent arrest of a migrant neighbor, which has a snowball effect on his relationship, leading the two wondering if they’re even fit to be parents—or partners.
Social satires skewering the white and well-off are all the rage these days—just look at two of TV’s most talked about series: Succession and The White Lotus. But Concerned Citizen presents a fascinating twist on the formula, focusing instead on (white, well-off) cis, gay men. The gays have come a long way since the liberation movement, but how often do we see media that holds a mirror up to that portion of the LGBTQ+ community, probing the privileges we’ve been afforded?
Concerned Citizen premiered last year at the Berlinale international film festival, where it was among the nominees for the Teddy Award, designated to honor the best LGBTQ+ features.
After opening in Israel this past December, it’s finally coming stateside, where it will open in select theaters and become digitally available via AppletTV and Amazon Prime Video on June 2.
Check out the recent U.S. trailer for Concerned Citizen here, and then scroll below for a preview clip, which shows how Ben’s “community work” begins to throw a wrench into his romance with Raz:
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