Based on writer-director Mike Mosallam’s popular short of the same name, Breaking Fast is a story of dialogue across difference, set against the bright lights and lively bars of West Hollywood. Mo (Haaz Sleiman), a gay man and practicing Muslim, and Kal (Michael Cassidy), an American from a military family, connect in a tale told through meals and settled in the rhythm of Ramadan. After a chance encounter brings the two men together on a classic Californian evening out, Kal offers to break fast with Mo each night of the month. They establish a routine which is peppered by learnings about one another and made heartier by a swirling cohort of lively family members. Weaving elegantly together that which they share and that which separates them, Breaking Fast makes a statement about harmony found through balance, not perfect sameness. This film unifies two lovers and unfurls the complexities of their multicultural love and tension through meals and minutiae, bringing serious conversations about identity to life in the everyday. Questions about religion, politics, gay rights, emotional baggage, and more are raised thoughtfully and answered elegantly through this thoroughly human, elaborately warm story. A rumination on dichotomy that ultimately holds space for peace and insists on nuance, the film is a passage beginning in heartbreak, moving through recovery, and culminating in a message of pure but not untested hope.
– Ashley Hoyle
