FLESH AND FUEL Discovery

Screening to be followed by a conversation with director and screenwriter Pierre Le Gall.

For veteran French trucker Étienne, life on the road has left little room for intimacy beyond fleeting sexual encounters at highway rest stops. But when he meets Bartosz, a Polish driver working for a company that exploits cheaper Eastern European labor, a casual hookup unexpectedly develops into something deeper. Soon the two men are trying to reconnect despite borders, punishing schedules and an industry designed to keep its workers perpetually in motion. Set amid the parking lots, loading docks and anonymous highways of the European trucking world, Pierre Le Gall’s unconventional romantic drama (winner of the Queer Palm Revelation Award at the Cannes Film Festival) is both sexually frank and disarmingly tender. Alexis Manenti and Julian Świeżewski bring an earthy, lived-in sensuality to characters refreshingly removed from the polished physical ideals of conventional screen romance. What emerges is a sexy, sweet and ultimately hopeful love story about two solitary men discovering that connection may be worth changing course for. –Mimi Brody