Wicked Queer 38

A retro-futurist story of utopian politics, ideological conflicts, supernatural leaders and totalitarian spectacle. Cyberpunk queer pirates against rainbow homo-capitalist normies. Revolution vs reformism; logic vs affect. The trappings of post-internet identity politics through a contemporary take of the myth of Orpheus. The first gay prime minister of Greece struggles to carry the legacy of LGBT history at a time of post-truth alt-right dystopia. The mysterious algorithm of the collective unconscious and heavy-handed tradition of “the land of heroes” proves unshakable. Will liberal Europe and its so-called ‘freedom of speech’ provide an alternative or is it just another platform for neo-reactionary culture wars?

Raf and Julie, a couple on the verge of breaking up, find themselves in an emergency ward bordering on collapse on the evening of a Parisian Yellow Vest protest.

Marcos, a rather unsuccessful film director, is immersed in the shooting of his new film, a queer giallo, when a series of terrible murders starts to happen in Barcelona, and all of them seem to be traced back to him. Cut! combines genres as far apart as terror and comedy, about a director vampirized by cinema who, despite being despised because of his films, needs to keep making them in order to live.

QUEER MUSLIM SHORTS is returning for its third year to celebrate this unique identity with stories exploring family, relationships, and faith. From heartwarming dramas to chuckling comedies, expect a wide range of emotions and an overwhelming sense of joy!

Leonard’s manifested a date with his ex - now he’s just gotta fix his vibration. Part comedy, part self-help nightmare, WAKE UP, LEONARD follows one man'’s quest for wellness while failing miserably to stay on his vibe. This is the story of a broken-hearted seeker with a tenuous grasp on his mental health, but an admirable faith in the Universe. Will Leonard learn how to not only love his higher self, but his lower self too? This improvised feature film was shot during the pandemic and explores themes of mental wellness, queer love, and self acceptance.

BALONEY tells the surprising story of San Francisco's beloved Gay All-Male Revue of the same name, which has been delighting audiences in recent years with live performances that lovingly investigate the larger milieu of gay and queer men's experience. BALONEY's co-creators, Michael and Rory, invite their collaborators and audiences to embrace the sexualized aspects of striptease and burlesque alongside a blend of fantasy, confession, and social commentary. Along the way, the film offers humor and insight into the ways in which gay men continue to navigate the coming out process, dating, and masculinity, as well as the challenges that come with 21st-century urban life, sex industry work, pornography, and trauma.

Sit back and enjoy all the drama, dancing, role playing, near death experiences and so much more in all of us.

A cop in denial of his sexuality, falls in love with his new partner, while investigating a string of bank break-in.

Being BeBe intimately charts 15 years in the life of drag performer Marshall Ngwa (aka BeBe Zahara Benet): An immigrant to America from homophobic Cameroon, first champion on Reality TV phenomenon RuPaul's Drag Race, and a leading artist celebrating Black Queer Excellence today. Marshall's emotional journey raises timely concerns at the intersection of LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and immigrant lives within the context of a hard-fought artist's journey toward success against all odds.

In a faraway future, on a wild and untamed planet, a lonely teenager, Roxy, releases an assassin from the sands she was buried in. As soon as she’s free, the criminal sparks death all around. Roxy and her mother Zora are held accountable, banished from their community and forced to track the murderer down. They start a long journey pacing the supranatural territories of their filthy paradise.

It's the human condition, and for trans folk, it's a heroic act by definition. Here are 10 stories about us from the perspective of the quest for human happiness.

When Emma's cancer takes a turn for the worse, she presents her new wife Josie a deathbed order: find someone new while Emma is still around to approve of her choice.

Named after the book by Father James Martin, Building a Bridge follows a priest on his journey to make the Catholic Church more accepting of the LGBTQ+ community, despite loud opposition from both inside and outside the Church.

40-year-old Daniel has been suspended from active police work and is under internal investigation for violence. When Sara, his internet love affair, stops answering his texts he decides to drive north in search of her, starting on what is apparently a fool’s errand. He shows Sara’s picture around, but nobody seems to recognize the woman. Until eventually a guy pops up saying he can put the two in touch under very specific conditions.

Raphi is young, androgynous and naive. In Barcelona, she begins a gender transition as well as an arduous journey to find her true identity. Co-written by and starring Raphaelle Perez, this is the narrative follow-up to director Adrian Silvestre’s ground-breaking hybrid doc SEDIMENTS, featuring many of the same trans performers and artists.

Antonio is a 30 yo family man, whose life finds an unexpected twist when he's suddenly dumped by his husband, whom he depends both psychologically and economically: he needs to find a new place to stay, a job and a new purpose in life. Antonio finds a room in an apartment owned by Denis and starts to work in a bakery owned by Luca, while attending pastry school. Through this process he discovers that it was wrong of him to give up his independence for the sake of his relationship in the past.

On the outskirts of Beirut, SIRENS follows the emotional journey of Lilas and Shery, co-founders and guitarists of the Middle East's first all-female metal band, as they wrestle with friendship, sexuality and destruction in their pursuit of becoming thrash metal rock stars. Directed by Lebanese-American woman director Rita Baghdadi, SIRENS is a completely unprecedented look at a Beirut-based Lebanese queer women’s heavy metal band and their trials and tribulations of trying to be their authentic selves in the most liberal country in the Middle East.

An outrageous erotic poem focusing on the daydreams of a beautiful boy sex worker who, from the seclusion of his ultra-kitsch apartment, conceives a series of interlinked narcissistic fantasies populated by matadors, dancing boys, slaves and leather-clad bikers.

Touching and poignant, the acclaimed coming-of-age comedy The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls In Love tells the story of two teenagers whose unexpected friendship grows into the joyful wildness of first love. Randy (Laurel Holloman), a rebellious working class tomboy, meets the beautiful, popular, well-to-do Evie (Nicole Ari Parker) when she brings her Range Rover into the repair shop where Randy works after school. Immediately intrigued by each other, the two girls start a romance that delights and disrupts their lives, causing Evie to lose her friends, Randy to lie to her parents, and sending the two of them on the run. Sensitive and romantic, funny and sincere, this daring film was hailed as a crossover success upon its release and is now celebrated as an iconic part of the 1990s queer cinema canon. Beloved by audiences, it was often referred to, with relief, as one of the few lesbian movies with a “happy ending where no one dies.” World Premiere of the Newly Remastered HD Film, with Preservation Funding Provided by the Sundance Institute and Strand Releasing. A Strand Releasing release.

Sup? Into? I don't know about you but with all this social distance, we are craving for something a bit more intimate. Come over for a cuddle, we got that good thread count ;).

São Paulo, in a dystopian future not so very far from the present. A virus is circulating, one that mainly attacks the brain and the ability to remember. A state that has forgotten a past marked by colonialism and dictatorship desperately awaits some indeterminate “Golden Phase.” Three young queer people drift through a city bled dry by the pandemic and rampant capitalism, remembering each another’s late lovers, sharing their experiences with HIV, getting makeup tips for masked faces and ultimately coming together with others forgotten by society for an antique revue in the salon of a singer named Mirta.

In a fractured, dream-like world, a transgender actor struggles with what it means to be seen after the beloved captain of his lesbian bowling league dies and a mysterious stranger shows up at the funeral.

Africa has a vibrant storytelling history and we are pleased to showcase three modern short films that live up to that rich legacy.

When maverick Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Debra Chasnoff is diagnosed with stage-4 breast cancer, she faces injustice as always, with her camera. With the help of her wife Nancy and their extended LGBTQ+ family, she traces a journey through the twists and turns of living with cancer. What emerges is a raw, intimate portrait of shifting relationships and identities — a story about hanging onto people you love, as you prepare to let them go. PROGNOSIS is a co-production of Citizen Film and GroundSpark, the award-winning documentary film organization founded by Debra Chasnoff. The film premiere will be accompanied by a broad-reaching community-engagement campaign designed to spark much-needed conversations about serious illness, end of life care and mortality.

A two-spirit genderqueer teenager from the Narragansett tribe in Rhode Island boldly challenges the status quo of what it means to be a queer Indigenous person in a world bound by binary gender roles.

Scatterbrained Polly gets a job as a secretary in Gabrielle's art gallery. Polly aspires to be a professional photographer, and idolizes Gabrielle for her artistic ability. When Gabrielle rekindles an old romantic relationship with the younger painter Mary, Polly becomes jealous, and discovers Gabrielle is not who she claims to be.

In 1958, a young trans woman named Agnes entered a study about sex disorders at UCLA to get the gender-affirming care she needed, by any means necessary. Her story was long considered to be exceptional until never-before-seen case files of other patients were found in 2017. Directed by Chase Joynt (NO ORDINARY MAN) and featuring an all-star cast of transgender artists and performers, FRAMING AGNES uses re-enactment and genre-blurring storytelling techniques to breathe new life into previously unknown people who redefined gender in the midcentury. Featuring Angelica Ross, Jen Richards, Zackary Drucker, Silas Howard, Max Wolf Valerio (Gendernauts, Max), and Stephen Ira.

At St Sebastian, a university where everyone are gay men and everything pulsates of eroticism and power games, the strict Schoolmaster works. His secret BDSM-affair with his student Charles comes to an abrupt end when a mysterious carving on his door brings back a traumatic memory from his past. Simultaneously the auditions for the annual Winter Procession engulfs the boy quartet; Tim, Fred, Paul and Noak, and the process challenges their internal hierarchy and threatens their friendship and unity.

In 2017 and 2019 respectively, Gemmel “Juelz” Moore and Timothy “Tim” Dean, two gay black men, both died of a meth overdose at the now-infamous apartment of Ed Buck, a once influential Democratic donor, businessman and LGBTQ+ political activist. The deaths sent shockwaves through LA’s LGBTQ+ community and particularly West Hollywood, LA’s gay Mecca. The ensuing media circus cooked up a spicy concoction of sex, drugs, race and politics, but had no appetite for the in-depth human stories of who the young men truly were. This documentary looks at Gemmel and Tim’s parallel walks of life told by the friends who loved them: memories, correspondence, things they did and didn’t share with each other, and the forces that led them to their tragic fate.

After her best friend Fiona's suicide, Jane's only solace is helping her widow care for their son. Polar opposites, the two women share nothing but grief & their love for Fiona until an unexpected intimacy builds between them.

Blending a Cold War thriller and a romantic tale of forbidden queer love, director Peeter Rebane’s FIREBIRD tells a based-on-a-true-story of two Estonian pilots in the Soviet Air Force pursuing an illegal affair amidst a torrid love triangle that threatens their safety, their careers, and their relationship with a childhood friend.

Antonio Giménez Rico’s stunning portrait documents the lives of six transgender women living in 1980s Madrid during Spain’s post-Franco makeover into a constitutional monarchy. Through wide-ranging conversations and interviews, the women discuss their experiences of nightlife, family, sex work, the legal system, and their personal narratives of transition. In a historical moment that witnessed a dramatic expansion of legal rights and political representation, their stories are an indictment of the repressive, transphobic institutions that remain entrenched in Spanish society. Featured in the hit series Veneno and the subject of a book-length history by Valeria Vegas, this provocative but nuanced portrayal joins a wave of rediscovered and reconsidered documents of trans lives in cinema.

Tough and cynical veteran Mitch and her more naive, yet eager partner Tigr are a couple of porn actresses involved in an intense lesbian relationship. Their already strained relationship reaches the breaking point as substance abuse and the pressure of working in the sex industry begins to take a heavy toll on both women.

We bring it to you every fest. The finest, weirdest, sexiest, and most envelope pushing shorts culled from this year's submissions. Buckle up it's going to be a ride you don't want to miss.

Boy Culture: The Series follows the continuing story of “X”, the anonymous high-end hustler and his complicated home life… Living with - and trying to get over - his ex-lover Andrew, and guided by a young, internet-savvy pimp, Chayce, each episode features a ’trick’ that tracks X’s evolving relationships - and deals with a socially relevant issue. Q. Allan Brocka returns to write and direct the series - co-authored with Matthew Rettenmund (who wrote the original novel). Derek Magyar and Darryl Stephens return to star, with Jason Caceres, a very talented, young newcomer. 6 episodes, about 15 minutes each and the sequel to the original film, 10 years later, and asks the question: What happens when rentboys grow up?

There is no time like the present to want to have a laugh and this hilarious program will do just that. Who hasn't thought about a throuple once or twice, or love at first sight, or had a sister who dresses in rainbow to show her support. Sit back, relax, and enjoy some queer comedy!

Watch in awww these films from our next generation of queer filmmakers. These amazing shorts will maybe make you want to buy some leather, look twice before sending a text, stop running from your truth. Whatever the case may be, these Up & Coming filmmakers are here to stay.

Seven tales of forgiveness and acceptance, belonging and celebration. Join us in exploring the complex and diverse narratives that make up Queer Asian experiences in this year's Queer Asian Stories program.

The search for identity and autonomy in six astonishing shorts, from Mayan deities to the burning of the Amazon, and much more.

We always love to bring you the true stories of people from our community. This year we have everything from a look back at the amazing Barbara Hammer, to queer comic book creators, to a heartwarming story about an artist and the joy she brings to her community. Whatever true stories you like, we have them here for you.

Featuring international films by a selection of new talents, this year's lineup includes a reinterpretation of Cocteau's The Human Voice, a psychological drama from Cyprus, and a brilliant Australian coming of age comedy.

Queerness has always been about pushing boundaries to discover new ways of being, seeing, and thinking. This year's experimental program casts a wide net in order to highlight a variety of perspectives and methods of pushing these boundaries that together challenge conventional filmmaking to make something beautiful.

Queers in space? Yes they are! We are excited to bring you this new category of shorts that are out of this world.