Check Out The Trailer for Foreign Gay Oscar Contender ‘Housekeeping for Beginners’

January 2, 2024
JOSHUA ANDREW

It's the new year and people are already getting all flustered about awards season, which, of course, culminates with the biggest award: The Oscars. One small film hoping to win big at the 2024 Academy Awards is Housekeeping For Beginners. The film from Macedonian-Australian filmmaker Goran Stolevski is Macedonia official submission for Best International Feature Film at the upcoming Oscars. A small LGBTQ+ film representing the small country nestled between Greece, Albania, and Bulgaria — how cool.

Housekeeping For Beginners tells the emotional and heartwarming story of two Queer couples living in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia. (No real spoilers here since I'm not giving away anything you don't see in the short trailer!). Dita (Anamaria Marinca) loses her loving parter Suada (Alina Serban) but promises to raise Sauda's two daughters. It turns out raising two girls isn't easy, especially when they resent you for not being their actual mother, who they are lost without. Dita enlists the help of her longtime gay best friend Toni (Vladimir Tintor) and his adorable younger Ali (Samson Selim) to help keep the family together and guide them through this difficult period. Toni and Dita end up pretending to be a conventional straight couple in benefit of the girls and it looks like the film explores how difficult it must be for Queer people to pretend to be straight for society and family sake.

The third film by openly gay filmmaker Goran Stolevski (his previous two being the acclaimed You Won't Be Alone and Of an Age), this one hit close to home being about LGBTQ+ people in his homeland of Macedonia. Housekeeping for Beginners premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2023—where it won the Queer Lion, the festival’s top prize for LGBTQ+ films. After taking that honor, Housekeeping for Beginners was quickly selected by Macedonia to be the country’s official submission for Best International Feature Film at the upcoming Oscars — major!

Check out the official trailer for Housekeeping for Beginners below.

Housekeeping For Beginners becomes available in the States at select theaters throughout the country later this month, January 26, distributed through Focus Features (an Academy favorite!).

And for something totally different, hit the banner below to take advantage of Carnal Media's too-good-to-be-true New Year’s sale on all Carnal+ sites! Now through Jan. 4th save 70% your first month and 50% every month after when you automatically re-bill!