Henrick Vartanian
Brave New Hollywood is all about discovering and promoting new talent and towards that end, we want to draw your attention to a small film playing at the 2013 OUTFEST Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival this month. FACING FEAR, a documentary short directed by Jason Cohen, captures the unlikeliest of reunions between a hate crime survivor and his attacker.
As a 13-year-old, Matthew Boger was thrown out of his home by his mother for being gay. He ended up on the streets of Hollywood as a teenage hustler, where he was brutally beaten by a group of neo-Nazi thugs. Boger miraculously survived the attack and later escaped the life on the streets.
Twenty-five years later, Boger met, during a chance meeting, a former neo-Nazi skinhead named Tim Zaal—incredibly, the same man who attacked and left him for dead years earlier.
Cohen captures the interaction that follows their initial meeting as both men candidly talk about their experiences, then and now. This chilling film is not a character study. Rather, it is a glimpse at an ongoing dialogue between two men who decided to allow cameras to frame this unique set of circumstances, with a focus on the effects of hate and the power of forgiveness.
FACING FEAR packs a major punch in its head-on, direct access to both victim and basher, putting the hate crime and its devastating aftermath front and center. It is a dialogue starter that can easily go on for much longer than its 23-minute screen time. It’s not an easy film to watch, because it deals with such a dark and ugly human trait.
However, it is a necessary documentation of a crisis that is still brewing in our society, and it needs direct and urgent addressing. Here at Brave New Hollywood we don’t often talk about short films, and it would have been a mistake to pass over this film. FACING FEAR is a must-see.
CLICK HERE for FACING FEAR’s website
CLICK HERE for OUTFEST 2013 website