A 16-minute single-take film directed by Andree Ljutica, How to Say I Love You at Night unfolds entirely within the confines of a New York City apartment, capturing the escalating tension between two men during an unexpected encounter. As Benny's (Mat Vairo) night of casual indulgence is disrupted by Paul's (Chris Petrovski) refusal to leave, the film delves into themes of male intimacy, vulnerability, and the unpredictability of human connection. The continuous shot immerses the viewer in the raw, unfiltered dynamics of the characters' interaction, blurring the lines between desire and discomfort.
Premiered at the Palm Springs International ShortFest, the film has been featured in numerous international festivals, including FlickerFest, Manchester International Film Festival, and OutFest LA, where it received an Honorable Mention for Best Performance in a U.S. Narrative Film. The film has garnered significant online attention, with its official release on YouTube amassing over 1 million views, resonating with audiences worldwide for its poignant exploration of contemporary queer experiences.
“How to say I love you at night”
There’s a violence endemic to love—called out by its ability to disrupt our lives in entirely contingent ways. An unexpected encounter with another becomes a disturbance, not an invitation: something that demands attention and reroutes the direction of a life. The romantic trope of two people colliding and altering each other’s course persists for a reason. In this sense, love is not merely an occurrence—it is an event, even an obscenity, in the philosophical sense: a rupture in what’s otherwise manageable, intelligible, and contained.
In the age of accelerated capitalism, love has increasingly submitted to the logic of transaction and efficiency. Through dating apps and devices of collective consumption, we’ve learned to select love without risking its consequence. We seek connection without the mess, the shift, the cost. Love, like everything else, is subject to dilution.
In How to Say I Love You at Night, Paul is the embodiment of that obscenity. His unfiltered presence, at times manic, poetic, or unstable, becomes a disruptive force within Benny’s carefully ordered world. Benny—conditioned by the transactional norms of queer dating—reacts with resistance, even violence. Yet it’s precisely this disturbance that awakens something dormant. His chase after Paul at the film’s end is not just romantic pursuit—it is the recognition that something real has occurred.
Shot in a single, unbroken take that moves from the interior of Benny’s controlled downtown apartment to the chaos of the street, the film mirrors the experiential shift it portrays. Time is unedited, continuity uninterrupted. The movement from interior to exterior is a passage from stability to risk, from containment to exposure. Paul’s world—unfixed, volatile, unhoused—becomes the stage for Benny’s transformation.
Though the film foregrounds love’s obscenity, it also suggests that the alternative is far more vacant. Without rupture, love becomes a hollow exchange between curated selves, optimized for appeal but devoid of consequence. If capitalism’s legacy is a withering earth and obsolete machines, love might be the last remaining disturbance worth chasing.
