James Franco

James Franco, James Franco has called on Australian censors to overturn their ban on a US film that features a number of explicit gay sex scenes.

In a YouTube appeal, Franco labelled the decision to ban I Want Your Love "embarrassing". The film is directed by Travis Mathews, the US actor's collaborator on Sundance entry Interior. Leather......guardian.co.uk

Bar. Australia's classification board has refused producers permission to screen it at the forthcoming Melbourne and Brisbane queer film festivals, deeming it overly sexually explicit.

"I don't know why in this day and age something like this, a film that's using sex not for titillation but to talk about being human, is being banned," Franco said in his YouTube appeal, which was posted on Monday. "It's just embarrassing. I hope you'll reconsider."

The star of Rise of the Planet of the Apes and the forthcoming Oz the Great and Powerful added that Mathews had depicted sex in a "sophisticated way". He said: "It's how we create children, it's how we connect. To keep it away from films that want to explore it as human behaviour is very shortsighted and I think very hypocritical. I don't think we would be having this conversation if he had made a very violent film."

This year's Melbourne queer film festival runs from 14 to 24 March, while the Brisbane iteration is staged between 5 and 14 April.