Homosexuality: From Rejection to Refuge

Network: Téva   Type: Documentaire   Format : 52’  Directing Sonia Rolland et Pascal Petit


Summary:

Le Refuge takes in young people from 18 to 25 who have been rejected by their parents simply because they are homosexual. The charity houses over 75 young people every day in 14 French towns.

Following a damning report on homophobia, which highlighted the unprecedented rise in the number of homophobic acts or words (the number of calls for help received by Le Refuge has increased ten-fold in just a few years), this situation profoundly outraged Sonia Rolland.

The documentary is therefore a “blank cheque” given to the director/actress. She wanted to reach out to these young people, to understand their feelings, how they live with being rejected by their parents and how Le Refuge helps them reconstruct their lives.. Meeting these young people, Sonia Rolland, as an engaged, tolerant woman and young mother, cannot hide her emotion or her outrage. She meets with this rejected youth, volunteers and the professionals of Le Refuge and records their daily lives. She lives embedded in the rooms of Le Refuge, both day and night, to better understand these victims’ suffering. But she also meets the parents, the ones who initially rejected their child because he was gay, before changing their minds and renewing contact with him. What these parents say is powerful and useful for giving hope to the young gay men who felt rejected and showing them that fences can sometimes be mended