In 1950’s rural Ontario a closeted gay man encounters a hitchhiker at a gas station. When he offers the hitchhiker a bed for the night, he is forced to confront his own suppressed desires.
Director’s Vision for ‘Lonely Country’
The dominant narrative surrounding rural queerness in cinema is one of escape, in which queer characters fulfill their destiny when they outgrow their given community and seek greener, more metropolitan pastures elsewhere. This narrative has never rung true to me. Queerness has always existed, and continues to exist, within rural spaces. Even in times before a visible queer community could safely, visibly exist anywhere, queer people were respected members of rural communities. Their queerness may not have had a name or a common language. It may have manifested in more discreet forms, but it was present. I wanted to pay homage to the queer people who chose not to leave their communities and to the communities that included them, even if by turning a blind eye.
