One of the hottest trends at queer film festivals these days is sports. And it's no surprise, really, since there are shamefully few male professional athletes who are openly gay, particularly in team sports that require sweating and showering together.

In fact, of the 133 pro and amateur athletes listed on outsports.com, guess how many gay male athletes are described as currently competing in traditional team sports? ZERO. (Most who've formerly played on straight teams are either retired, were kicked out, or committed suicide.)

The playing field continues to be the domain of the macho hetero, and if you're light in the Nike's, forget it. You gotta find a queer team. Filmmakers are still finding ample fertile emotional ground to explore in one of the final bastions of gay taboos.

During the past couple of months, the film fest fave Summer Storm, a German film about coming out on a rowing team, has enjoyed a successful run in theaters across the U.S.

And now comes Guys and Balls, another German import, about a star goalie named Ecki (Maximilian Brückner) who's booted off a “straight” local soccer team after he's caught tongue-wrestling with a guy. This old-fashioned, feel-good flick, which chronicles Ecki's scheme to exact revenge, nabbed a bunch of honors, including a 2005 Outfest LA Audience Award for best feature.

Sort of a cross between The Full Monty and Bend it Like Beckham, this sweet, irresistible root-for-the-homo-team story lives up to its clever title.

I compare it to The Full Monty not because the guys bare all (sorry, fellas) but because Ecki's revenge plot involves assembling a motley crew of misfits to take on his former soccer team in a big grudge match. Unlike much of queer cinema, which relies on buffed eye candy to gloss over the shortcomings of a film, Guys and Balls has cast normal guys with beer guts, shabby clothes and—gasp!—body hair.

Among Ecki's new teammates are the closeted barfly soccer fanatic, the beautiful Turkish waiter with a crush on Soccer Adonis David Beckham, the wiry soccer whiz who looks like a boy but is really a lesbian, the pair of hunky Brazilians, and the effeminate bookseller who is really straight. Got all that?

My favorites are the leather-daddy threesome that Ecki finds at the dungeon-esque Steel Pipe bar. The tender scenes of them snuggled in their black vinyl waterbed together, shot from above, are oddly heartwarming. One of them is actually a real daddy, now divorced, who has a thing or two to prove to his distraught young son.

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