From North African diaspora stories of queer liberation and to tales of young love in Iran, this year's queer MENA stories are sure to leave you with a lasting smile.

In her desire and ambition to become a powerful glam rock star, Elda comes into conflict with her shy alter ego Diego, with whom she shares the same body. A pilgrimage to the altar of a trans woman, who was murdered and buried in the middle of a forest, awakens in Elda new ways of loving, growing and bonding, in connection with nature and beyond the limitations of binaries.

A unique queer horror set in Egypt with an Egyptian filmmaker and all Middle Eastern cast and crew, THE JUDGMENT follows a gay couple returning from the US to Egypt for a family emergency, which forces them back into the closet and to attempt to pass as just friends. As the pervasive tension of dangerous homophobia rises around them, they begin to fear that they have fallen prey to witchcraft as punishment for their “homosexual sins”, causing one of them to fall into religious terror and exposing his unhealed past.