Poreless is equal parts a heartfelt comedy about the queer Muslim experience and social commentary about the beauty industry. At the center of this short film premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival is Akram, played by Akbar Hamid. He’s a queer Muslim beauty founder whose brand is poised for its biggest break yet when he enters this Shark Tank-esque competition. But of course things go awry when Akram has an allergic reaction. That’s where panic sets in and the absurd realism starts.
Within the beauty industry space there is this continued pressure to stay flawless. And Akram feels that as he’s trying to sell his beauty brand, also named Poreless. But he doesn’t face these pressures alone. In the beginning of the short film he has a friend that is helping him work through his anxieties when it comes to his pitch to this beauty empire. And when he has his allergic reaction that’s when his family comes through by agreeing to pretend to be him during his pitch.
MORE: Interested in more queer Tribeca Film Festival short films? Read our review for Sister!
Akram’s siblings couldn’t be any different from him. Arif (Parvesh Cheena) has no desire to be fabulous and polished like Akram. And their sister Asma (Sureni Weerasekera) is down for anything, even if she’s going to make fun of her brother along the way. Both, to the dismay of Akram and myself, have beautiful skin the result of just using soap. No lotions, serums, or creams in sight. This leads to the most harebrained, but brilliant, moment of Poreless where Asma hits the stage as Akram and none of the white people say anything because they’re too afraid to be called racist.
Like I mentioned earlier, in the beauty industry there is a continued pressure to be flawless. Akram understands that. He also understands that the beauty industry is kind of unbothered with the fact that they do not invest in beauty for brown skin like they should. And when they do invest in brown skin, it’s often to check a box instead of actual effort to support the vast shades of humanity. So he takes that system that was built to not support him and he uses it to his advantage in a fabulous but also effortless manner that reclaims his identity (and that of his siblings) while also making it obvious to the viewer that the beauty industry needs to change.
MORE: We interviewed Dylan & Spencer Wardwell about their LGBTQ+ short film Sweet Talkin’ Guy.
All of this goes back to notes on Poreless from when I first received the screener for this short film.
In their notes they mentioned that “comedy is the great connector.” It disarms, invites, and reveals. And Poreless does that. It lets you experience what it is to be queer and Muslim person in a space that isn’t manufactured Hollywood garbage that stereotypes the Muslim community. Instead, Poreless is light in its humor, sharp in its commentary, and healing for those who maybe have never seen themselves on screen in this manner.
And you don’t have to be Muslim to understand this concept, Poreless overall, or how the beauty industry needs to step it up. You just have to be human. That can’t be too hard, right? *Inserts nervous chuckle because people are sometimes the worst but f**k them because Poreless is a well-timed comedy wrapped in the pressures of modern 21st-century woes*
Poreless is premiering at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival.
Queerly Not Straight posts Saturdays with opinion pieces, listicals, reviews, and more focused on the LGBT community (and occasionally about the Latine community since I am Latine.)
For Pride 2025, I’ll be posting more throughout the month.
