Wolfe looks to Feb. 23 for the DVD debut of writer/director Mike Mosallam’s epicurean, religious and romantic tale, Breaking Fast.
We can all skip the part where we learn that Mosallam’s film opened at the Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival on March 7 of this year and then the dreaded pandemic shoved it to the sidelines. It has been an all-too-common tale of cinematic woe.
We can all agree that 2020, for new films in particular, was a miserable experience. The question then becomes how long can a filmmaker, producers and distributors sit on promising film before moving on. In the case of Breaking Fast that point will arrive on Feb. 23.
We open with an introduction to Mohammad, or just Mo (Haaz Sleiman — as Ali in the Jack Ryan cable series, plus such films as The Visitor, Dorfman in Love, Highland Park, Those People), as the Islamic observance of Ramadan is concluding … and things for him do not go well. His heart, his spirit is broken over tradition and the deceits that must be played out for appearance sake … he’s done with that.
Skip ahead 11 months to the next cycle of Ramadan, the arrival of the first crescent moon and the beginning of the pattern of the fast, the pre-dawn suhur and the sunset arrival of iftar. Mo is not looking forward to this holy period, which brings back painful memories. But things are about to change!!
Mo has a meet-cut encounter with Kal (Michael Cassidy — Night of the Living Deb, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Argo) at Mo’s friend Sam’s (Amin Al-Gurnal) birthday party. They hit it off and a month-long celebration of Ramadan begins, with the culture, the meals, the fasting all playing a part in the growing relationship between Mo and Kal … who, indeed, come from very different worlds.
Filmmaker Mike Mosallam’s Breaking Fast is not your stereotypical gay romance. It’s funny, informative and at times it can be more than what you expect from a genre-themed romantic drama and/or comedy. It’s too bad the Covid-19 pandemic closed it off to the cinematic world. So, the next best thing, on DVD from Wolfe on Feb. 23 (by the way, Ramadan in 2021 begins on Apr. 12, so the timing here is spot-on).
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