Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan has said that his upcoming film Matthias & Maxime is “not gay” but “life.”

Dolan wrote, directed and stars in the film, which this week had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

The film follows a group of friends in their late 20s.

Variety wrote: “On a weekend away with their all-male crew of longtime friends, crisp lawyer Matthias (played by Gabriel D’Almeida Fritas) and the more overtly damaged, hard-up Maxime (Dolan) are inveigled into acting in a student short directed by a pal’s bratty younger sister; only once they’ve committed are they told that the film requires them to kiss. Reluctantly, anxiously, they go ahead with it, their friends jeering from the sidelines; Dolan, acting as his own editor as usual, sharply cuts to black before their lips touch. A kiss is just a kiss, maybe, but Matthias & Maxime has a little more baggage to unpack before we get there.”

“As it turns out, the men have kissed before,” the outlet added.

Deadline said that the men “begin to question their true feelings” after kissing.

“This film is not gay, it's life,” Dolan said at the film's press conference at Cannes. “We never talk about heterosexual films. 'Oh, I saw this great heterosexual love story.' For me, it's not a story of homosexuality or gay love. Ultimately, I don't think that the two protagonists are aware that it is gay love. It's love.”

Dolan's previous seven films have won many awards at Cannes.