In keeping with Pride Month, the award-winning series “Proud” is arriving on HBO Max. It centers on Filip, a young, drug-using, carefree gay man who, after a family tragedy, unexpectedly and unprepared takes on guardianship of his younger niece. The series from Karol Klementowicz earned the prestigious Grand Prix in March at Lille’s international Series Mania festival. The eight-part drama (beginning June 8, 2026, with one episode per week; each episode about 35 minutes) follows themes of prejudice, guilt, responsibility for a baby, queer life, chosen families in a socially conservative society — and, more broadly, the meaning of care and love.
Orgy after about three minutes into the first episode
The first image of a naked male butt appears about a minute and a half into Episode 1, and just after three and a half minutes viewers witness a gay orgy. The series hits hard and fast from the start.
A gay lead character on HBO Max—this will likely evoke immediate comparisons to the buzz around the hockey romance “Heated Rivalry,” which drew global attention earlier this year and sparked theories that streaming audiences crave queer content. “Proud” certainly tells a gay coming‑of‑age story, but on a very different scale. The coming-out is behind him; the challenges he faces are far more varied.
The Series Mania jury called the Polish production “a deeply moving portrait of a young man at a turning point.” It added: “A substantial series that engages with both the everyday homophobia of our modern world and the protagonist’s defensive self‑absorption — a stance that serves him as an escape from brutal reality and from his own shortcomings.”
Direct link | Polish original trailer for the series
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“A series like this has never existed before”
Lead actor Ignacy Liss—known from Polish Netflix projects such as the literary adaptation “Der Kurpfuscher” (2023) or the mystery series “Open Your Eyes” (2021)—was named best actor in Lille.
A gay man and a baby, as seen in “Proud,” still has the potential to provoke when people take issue with someone else’s sexual orientation. Liss (28) told Variety that “a series like this hasn’t existed before.” He believes “Proud” has the potential to illuminate different viewpoints and show that “people can—and should—talk to one another.”
And creator-director Klementowicz remarked: “No one will change their mind just because they watched the series, but perhaps you won’t look at this man as only a gay person anymore — you’ll see him as a human being.”
The aim was to illustrate all the difficulties a young gay man would face if he wanted to adopt a child. It isn’t simply about the topic of same-sex couples and adoption, because that issue doesn’t even exist in Poland (yet).
The drug-addicted Filip seems to have lost his bearings
A young man who, after the sudden death of his sister, must decide whether to take responsibility for her daughter: that echoes the French cinema jewel “My Life with Amanda” (2018). In that film, a woman dies in a terrorist attack in Paris, and director Mikhaël Hers follows her brother David and his seven-year-old niece Amanda.
In “Proud,” the trigger for the grief-and-responsibility drama is a sudden heart attack, and the protagonist is a drug-addicted gay man.
Liss, who is married to a woman, told Variety that initial access to the role of the party-loving gay man with a life full of sex dates and drug use was challenging. “Everyone goes through a phase when they let loose, but in his case it’s clear he has lost something along the way. Still — and this is the key — he is capable of love and empathy.” The character Filip grew up as an orphan and clearly does not want his sister’s child to endure the same fate.
