Two Black Boys in Paradise (2025)

Perhaps paradise is only just for two people at any one time? This short animation introduces us to “Eden” and “Dula”. They are two black men who are obviously in love, but over the course of the next ten minutes come to realise that expressing that love comes with challenges. Challenges amidst a society that is not averse to judging colour and/or sexuality and that takes little account of the burgeoning sense of affection between these two men. What struck me most about this simple but affective stop-motion animation was whether or not it could ever be made using real men? Not women, nor trans people, but two late teenage black men, playing out their roles as real life characters. Are we, as a society, ready for that in our mainstream media? Perhaps the pretty continuous nudity might impact on that possibility, but listening to Jordan Stephens’ natural style of narration I did wonder if he, himself, would make for an ideal candidate? A man who has always appeared to me to be an open minded gent entirely comfortable in his own skin and engagingly (and shrewdly) aware of the British society in which he inhabits. This animation opens the door and the mind to a world of bigotry and racism that many might assume has gone now, as well as to these lad's own processes of coming of age and as an unsentimental love story is well worth a look.