Director Lucio Castro emerged with End of the Century in 2019, a slightly surreal gay romance set in Barcelona.

His follow-up After His Death, about a woman (Mia Maestro) in freefall after an affair with an enigmatic musician (Lee Pace), premiered at the Berlinale and took Argentine writer-director Castro out of the queer cinematic space.

But he’s back with another gay romance, this time set in New York City, with Drunken Noodles.

It has a shot-on-film aesthetic mixed with mystical elements, and it’s premiering in the Cannes Film Fest ACID parallel section. ACID stands for Association du Cinéma Indépendant pour sa Diffusion, which is dedicated to elevating indie filmmakers.

The mind-bending elements of “End of the Century” take on fuller force and in a film that is not to mention quite sexy.

Drunken Noodles takes place over two summers, in both the city streets and the forest paths of upstate New York, as art student Adnan (Laith Khalifeh) has a series of unexpected, intimate, and otherworldly, time-and-space-warping encounters.

“Adnan, a young art student, arrives in New York City to flat sit for the summer. He begins interning at a gallery where an unconventional older artist he once encountered is being exhibited. As moments from his past and present begin to intertwine, a series of encounters – artistic and erotic – open cracks in his everyday reality.”

“In the summer of 2021, a friend introduced me to the work of Sal Salandra, an artist in his late 70s who had recently begun creating explicit sexual tableaux in needlepoint — a craft typically reserved for gentler themes, like kittens playing with balls of yarn,” Castro said as to the film’s origins in a press statement. “I was instantly captivated and went to interview Sal at his Long Island home, thinking I might make a documentary. However, I left feeling that what drew me to his work remained out of reach. I realized that what I wanted to explore couldn’t be articulated in a documentary, it had to be done through fiction.”

Watch the trailer for “Drunken Noodles” below. The film premieres at the festival in the ACID section Sunday, May 18.

The film is produced by Castro and Cortright under their Alsina 427 banner, with co-producers Joanne Lee and Julia Bloch, and executive producer Pierce Varous of Nice Dissolve. M-appeal is handling world sales. U.S. distribution is currently in negotiation and is expected to be announced shortly.