PLEASE BE HAPPY

“Being a queer parent means that you sort of reinvent your own rules”

 

Please Be Happy is a Short Docu-Film exploring the varying relationship dynamics within three families on the intersection of parenthood and queerness. Taking the viewer into the intimate real-life environment of its subjects, the film challenges what we consider to be “traditional” family life.

'Please Be Happy' explores rarely seen sides of queer life, in contrast to the heavily depicted images of parties, rebellion, and hypersexualised queer lifestyles & culture, which while should be celebrated do not give us a fuller picture of the everyday realities of day-to-day queer family life. A life that is equally deserving of representation in order to normalise queer culture and focus on all the different kinds of love within queer life.

This film explores 3 families - a queer couple and their path to parenthood, a queer young person with their parent, and a queer polyamorous parent with their child. The film looks at how these family relationships have been impacted, if at all, by the subjects queerness.

 Director - Elif Gönen

Producer - Ailsa Aiko & Elif Gönen

Executive Producer - Marium Raja

1st AC / Focus Puller - Milo Brown

2nd AC / Loader - Jade Jenkins

Soundtrack - Roja & Lava La Rue

Colorgrade - Caroline Morin

Special thanks to James Holcombe

Production Company - No Chiefs

RUNTIME: 10 minutes 12 seconds
GENRE: Short Documentary Film
FORMAT: Colour, 16mm Film

 

Directors Statement: elif gonen

I was born and raised in Turkey, where “family values" are one of the most important aspects of it's culture, and yet I’d always struggled to find any representation of an alternative family dynamic that I’d like to create for myself as a queer woman. I found myself questioning more and more what elements comprise a 'family' and why queer people have such limited family planning options.

I wanted to find different families with queer individuals, and document a day in their life to demonstrate how different it can be compared to a traditional family setting. Throughout my documentation, I realised all the “alternative” families I’d interviewed were coming to the same conclusion about what mattered most to them on their journey to parenthood. It was their children's happiness and the ability to show their authentic selves, above anything else. For me that was what made them a family.