The Stranger Owns The Night
Abstract
The Stranger Owns the Night is a story of Troy, an independent openly gay twenty something who finds his real dad online after not meeting him for the entirety of his life. In the process, he finds himself enamored by his presence, unconsciously confusing his yearning for emotional intimacy with sexual desire.
The film attempts to explore how toxic masculinity subtly pervades our lives and the connections that men make with other men. While most men are raised as socially dominant, violent, misogynistic, homophobic, competitive, and emotionally stifled, father and sons find it difficult to be intimate and vulnerable with each other and with other people. In an existing patriarchal culture that equates masculinity with power, the film frames these walls men have put up for themselves as something that is tragic in our modern world.>