The film OUT receives the Winq Culture Award

On Friday 27 September, the seventh edition of the Winq Awards took place in Amsterdam. During this annual event, which honours individuals and initiatives contributing to the visibility and inclusion of the LGBTQIA+ community, the film OUT was presented with the Winq Culture Award. This award recognises cultural projects that portray the diversity and complexity of queer lives in an original and insightful way.

Editor-in-chief Martijn Kamphorst underlined the significance of the award: “All over the world queer people face misunderstanding and conservative backlash. With the Winq Awards we create a positive counter-sound, celebrating people who, in so many different ways, strengthen our visibility and resilience and show how much talent and power exists within our community” (Winq).

OUT premiered in the Netherlands on Coming Out Day and went on to be selected for a wide range of international film festivals, including in San Francisco, London and Hong Kong. The film has therefore reached audiences both at home and abroad.

In OUT we follow Tom (Bas Keizer) and Ajani (Jefferson Yaw Frempong-Manson), two young queer men who are madly in love and leave the small-town confines of Twente for the vibrant city of Amsterdam. Shot in striking black and white, the film depicts how they dive into the capital’s nightlife, chase their dreams, and wrestle with questions of identity, freedom and the limits of their relationship.

Director and screenwriter Dennis Alink, together with co-writer and cinematographer Thomas van der Gronde, created with OUT a deeply personal coming-of-age story about group pressure and sexual liberation. In an interview with Winq, Alink explained: “In Twente, at film school and within the queer community I often encountered rejection. In this film I wanted to challenge that group pressure. The opening takes place in Ootmarsum, the town where I grew up, and at one point Tom and Ajani even move into my old student flat. OUT is my most personal film to date.”

The lead actors also highlight how close the film feels to their own lives. Bas Keizer describes it as “an adventure that took me to places I would not normally go”, while Jefferson Yaw Frempong-Manson emphasises that the explicit scenes in the film are “an essential part of the story, showing how the protagonists discover what love is – and what it is not. The process also helped me in exploring my own sexuality and gender.”

The film’s international success took the makers by surprise. Alink reflected: “I would already have been happy if the film had ended up on a Dutch streaming service, but it is still playing in cinemas around the world. A boy in Spain wrote to me that for the first time he felt seen – that really moved me.”