Bent

Under the unrelenting gaze of concentration camp guards, two men become riveted by each other and the tender, terrified love that sparks between them. A Pulitzer Prize-nominated WWII drama from Martin Sherman, Bent takes place in 1930s Berlin, as two lovers are thrown onto a train to Dachau as part of the Gestapo’s plan to cleanse the city of “perverts.” One denies his lover at the hands of the guards — but while at the camp he learns that true dignity lies in acknowledging who he is. Compelling, erotic, and even heartbreakingly witty, Bent focuses on Nazi persecution of queer-identified people, whose experiences have often been cast to the margins of Holocaust narratives. Sherman draws exquisitely detailed characters, each of whom embodies a different personal relationship to queer (or “bent”) desire in 1930s Germany.