Review: ‘Silent Love’ is a Romantic Doc Set in the Middle of the International Struggle for LGBTQ Acceptance

The movies use the “orphan child, troubled relative” dynamic to explore a lot of different issues. In M3GAN, the topic of AI surrogates was explored using a young toy engineer and her orphaned niece. Life as We Know It explored love and commitment with an orphaned girl being raised by her aunt and a friend of the family. There are many other examples in cinema, joined now by Silent Love, a polish film about a young woman who takes over responsibility for raising her brother after their parents pass.

Aga is a young woman who must care for her brother Milosz and the farm her mother left, but her heart is in another place in Germany. And, with her lover Majka. Aga moves back to her home village in Poland, a place that is slowly embracing the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and policies sweeping Poland. Milowsz is being heavily inundated with the rhetoric at school, where in a PE class, the boy is blasted with toxic masculinity that sticks. However, he has grown to love Majka and hasn’t expressed any knowledge that his sister may be one of “the gays” his peers and school are warning against.

One thing is for certain, this version of the orphaned child/troubled relative movie is hitting on something different. First, it’s a documentary, not fiction. We watch as a real family forms around a real young boy who desperately needs it, but under a government that is still operating under outdated and bigoted presumptions. Throughout the film, we are given splices of Aga’s testimony to the family courts as she seeks custody of her little brother. These points get a little close to thriller level as she is questioned about being a “young maiden” who will care for her brother alone.

Meanwhile, Majka is moving in to help with Milowsz and fix the house and the farm. We find that she has a history in the village and family that she must reckon with. Majka has a whole community and supportive structure all laid out in Germany. It would be better for the little family to stay there. However, Miloswz is not coping well. With the rise in rhetoric, policy changes, and even escalating tensions in school, the film does offer a great argument to anyone who still questions equality for the LGBTQ community at large.

Silent Love is a beautifully shot love story that is ultimately about making the family that loves you and the realities of queer existence in some places of the world.

4 of 5