Hello, Stranger

By day, Arthur (Arend Pinoy) is a single father doing his best for his seven-year-old son Max (Tobias Giet), juggling school runs and the small routines of home. By night, he becomes someone else entirely, a drag queen whose stage life he keeps carefully hidden from the boy who depends on him. Belgian filmmaker Anthony Schatteman's 18-minute short, originally titled Dag vreemde man, follows the growing strain between these two selves as the effort of secrecy begins to wear on Arthur and the distance between the parent Max knows and the performer he does not becomes harder to sustain. With Wim Opbrouck and Delfine Bafort in supporting roles, this Dutch-language drama treats its subject with tenderness rather than spectacle, asking what a parent owes a child in honesty and what it costs to live a life in two halves.