Award winning Love is All You Need? is a unique short film that pushes conventional boundaries and examines issues of human and equal rights in the LGBTIQ Community.
Award winning Love is All You Need? is a unique short film that pushes conventional boundaries and forces audiences to experience for themselves, the serious and persisting issues of human and equal rights in the LGBTIQ Community.
The idea for Love is All You Need? stems from the continuing rise in LGBTI teenage suicide. Kim Rocco Shields, writer and director, states “recently I’ve been really affected by stories of gay suicide and stories of bullying by people who should understand that being gay isn’t anything to be made fun of, it’s just who they love”.
Children all over the world are subject to hate for being ‘different’ and many are taking their own lives because they think they can’t live in a world that won’t accept them. Love is All You Need? propels its audience into another dimension of existence. Imagine a world where ‘Straight’ is considered ‘gay’ – and ‘gay’ is ‘straight’, a world where it is taboo for a woman and a man to fall in love, a world where ‘same sex marriage’ is the only way that society permits you to love.
The short film takes you on a journey in the life of 11-year-old Ashley Curtis. Ashley comes from an all-American family that ticks all the right boxes – she has two Mums’, two grandfathers, two uncles and a little brother. But there is a problem; Ashley has a crush on her male classmate, which is against everything this world has ever taught her.
This undeniable attraction to the opposite sex causes her to be the constant target of verbal and physical bullying and abuse until she is driven to extremes.
“While this film will undoubtedly cause some uneasiness to its viewers, perhaps that is exactly what it is meant to do” says director Kim Rocco Shields about making the audience feel as uneasy as society currently makes LGBTI people feel.
This confronting yet pivotal film is the second part of a project by Kim Rocco Shields. The full feature film of Love Is All You Need?, sees the journey of Ashley woven into the world of Jude Klein, a star quarterback. Jude meets a sports journalist Ryan Morris and the two quickly form a romantic bond that must be hidden from this uncompromising “gay” world.