Tapu

Arona’s safe zone at the elderly care facility he works for, a job that makes him feel better about himself over dark secrets he hides on the side, becomes a nightmare on an early Friday evening. As his shift ends, a familiar acquaintance is soon revealed as a ‘paying client’ of a duo booking for Sunday night. Arona’s best friend, Sam, is the one who primarily books these male escorting appointments online for the both of them, but Sam has no clue that this client so happens to be the son of the elderly woman whom Arona cares for at the facility. It is a small world but it is smaller online and now, Arona is in a betwixt into coming forth to his Samoan Kinfolk, to his faith, to himself; because hiding isn’t an option anymore. Arona doesn’t do web-camming and escorting around the clock for pleasure, no; he does it to fill a void, trying to find his innocence that was taken from him when he was sexually abused as a young boy. Now as a man, he’s on a rigorous road of sexual promiscuity hoping to find someone who would want him innocently. But like a broken record, trouble seems to find Arona even at the last place he’d expected it to be; the elderly care facility.

Directed by Hinano Tekurio Tanielu and Manu Tanielu (USA)