At first I thought this trailer for Donkey Love, which is about Colombians having sex with donkeys, might be fake – you know, something the Venezuelans or Mexicans made to make fun of Colombians, the way Australians and New Zealanders are always accusing each other of having sex with sheep. But oh no, it’s very real. Just this week, Donkey Love was left scrambling after Landmark theaters in Kelowna, British Columbia refused to play the film, even though it was part of a film festival there. In fact, they cancelled the whole damn festival.

The Okanagan Film Festival [OFF] International was set to open this week at Landmark’s Paramount Theatre in Kelowna, B.C., but when word spread last week that it would be showing the bestiality documentary, angry citizens spoke out, organizing online petitions against the screening.

Soon after, the theatre opted to cancel the festival.

The 75-minute documentary, Donkey Love, has been screened in Australia and won Best Documentary at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival. [TorontoSun]

No theater to play it in?! I think I speak for everyone when I say that these donkey f*ckers deserve better. Seriously, I would watch this. Hard. Check out the trailer below:

Funny, shocking and controversial, Donkey Love is a documentary that introduces the unknown tradition of Colombians having sex and falling in love with donkeys. It starts off as a rite of passage ritual that fathers initiate with their sons and is carried on into their adulthood where men often end-up cheating on their wives with donkeys. Colombians believe that boys should practice having sex with donkeys to prepare themselves for women, that it makes their penises bigger and also that it prevents them from becoming homosexuals. This cultural practice is so widely accepted in Colombia that musicians have written songs about it, an author has written a book about it and there is even a festival that celebrates it. [DonkeyLove] One scene in Donkey Love shows the filmmakers laughing as they film a man committing acts of bestiality on the side of a road. [SMH.au]

They’re in a tricky situation, unfortunately. The animal activists call it rape (as if they know what the donkey’s thinking either), and bestiality (itself, as well as the act of filming and distributing depictions of it) is highly illegal, but it is after all a documentary. They were just documenting something that was already happening, not staging it for profit. The reality is that if the filmmakers had just acted super serious about the whole enterprise, and made some big speech about “exposing the horrors of bestiality,” instead of treating it all as a big joke, I guarantee you they wouldn’t have any problems getting it into film festivals. There’s a widespread (though incorrect) perception that poking fun at something makes you somehow complicit. Just ask that burn victim down the street and his crybaby parents.

Oh well, I still want to watch it. Sell it online, maybe? They could charge, like, $6.99 a ride.