Beach Rats

Beach Rats is an indie drama written and directed by Eliza Hittman (It Felt Like Love). The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and stars Harris Dickinson, Madeline Weinstein, and Kate Hodge.

Frankie, an aimless teenager on the outer edges of Brooklyn, is having a miserable summer. With his father dying and his mother wanting him to find a girlfriend, Frankie escapes the bleakness of his home life by causing trouble with his delinquent friends and flirting with older men online. When his chatting and webcamming intensify, he finally starts hooking up with guys at a nearby cruising beach while simultaneously entering into a cautious relationship with a young woman. As Frankie struggles to reconcile his competing desires, his decisions leave him hurtling toward irreparable consequences.

A native of Brooklyn, Hittman based the film in the coastal communities she came to know growing up. “I’ve always been a little bit fascinated with those neighbourhoods and I’d spend a lot of the summer just flopping around those beaches,” she says. “It’s a part of Brooklyn that feels caught between past and present. Those areas have a history of violence of all kinds–crimes against people of colour and gay men, and organized crime–and, unlike other parts of the City, change has come very slowly.”

Beach Rats is rated 14A.