What to watch: Almost Us
A romantic comedy from Anthony Bawn.
Set against the desert landscape of Phoenix, Almost Us explores what happens when desire collides with power—and when love becomes inseparable from legacy and community survival.
The story opens with a fiery one-night stand and the rom-com complications that follow between Darren, a closeted and politically connected real estate developer, and Jason, an openly queer and charismatic community organiser. What begins as heat and escape soon evolves into a volatile collision of worlds with sharp banter, when Darren’s luxury redevelopment project threatens the Baldwin Cultural Center, a beloved sanctuary and organising hub for Phoenix’s marginalised communities.
“Awkward run-ins and escalating misfires spark plenty of laughs along the way...” explains creator Anthony Bawn - who also stars as Jason. “Darren is used to controlling his image—money, silence, strategy—while Jason leads with truth, community, and heart. Their connection forces them to face what they’ve both been avoiding: the difference between wanting someone and being willing to be seen with them.”
The relationship between Darren and Jason lives in moral gray space played with romantic-comedy tension and sharp banter where love and leverage coexist. “It’s somewhere in between, and that’s what makes it honest,” Bawn explains. “Jason is genuinely drawn to Darren’s tenderness beneath the armour, but he’s not naïve about what Darren represents in the fight to save the centre. Love and leverage live in the same room, and the film doesn’t pretend they don’t.”
At its core, Almost Us is an intimate romance comedy layered with urgent social commentary, grounded, but still fun and amorous. Through Darren—a polished, strategic man shaped by family expectation and proximity to power—Bawn examines the cost of invisibility. “Darren embodies the cost of silence: what it does to your love life, your integrity, and your spirit,” he says. “Privilege can protect you, but it can also imprison you.”
Jason, meanwhile, is “charismatic, messy in the best way, deeply rooted, and funny as hell when it counts”. He is motivated by protection: of the Baldwin Cultural Center, of chosen family, and of the identity he fought hard to claim. “His superpower is belief,” Bawn notes. “He believes community can outlast systems that try to erase it.”
The Baldwin Cultural Center stands as the film’s emotional heartbeat, the rom-com pressure cooker where serious talks keep getting hilariously interrupted. “It isn’t just a location. It’s a sanctuary, a memory bank, and a lifeline,” Bawn says. “Spaces like it are where marginalised people gather, heal, organise, and breathe. The fight for the centre is the fight for belonging and for who gets to shape a city’s future.”
Rooting the story specifically in Phoenix was intentional. “Phoenix is a city of contrasts; the perfect backdrop for a romance comedy with real stakes, with new luxury rising fast and long-time communities fighting not to disappear,” Bawn explains. “The desert heat becomes emotional pressure. The wide streets and open sky can feel freeing or isolating depending on the moment. The city helped us talk about expansion, erasure, and what gets left behind.”
Balancing romance, humour, and political stakes while directing himself proved both a challenge and a reward. “The biggest challenge was staying emotionally open while also staying technically sharp; switching from ‘feel it’ to ‘fix it’ in real time,” Bawn shares. “But directing myself allowed me to capture intimacy that feels lived-in, not performed.”
With its sensuality, wit, and emotional rawness, Almost Us expands the frame of queer storytelling beyond coming-out narratives to confront class, legacy, and community responsibility. “Queer stories aren’t just about identity,” Bawn says. “They’re about power, class, and how the past complicates the future. The film asks: who gets to be free, and what systems quietly decide that?”
The title itself speaks to longing, possibility and the sweet, funny chaos of getting close. “‘Almost Us’ is the ache of a future that’s within reach but not guaranteed,” Bawn explains. “It’s about that painful space between possibility and commitment, between almost and actual.”
Almost Us premieres April 17 exclusively on WatchVIM.
