As Sydney emerges from a surprisingly chilly Australian winter, the 11th Annual Queer Screen Film Festival is here to kickstart spring with its lineup of 35 feature films from across the globe. From August 28th to September 1st, the 2024 edition of Queer Screen will celebrate LGBTQIA+ stories on screen in Sydney, before going on-demand allowing more people the chance to explore this quirky and impactful selection.
“We’re bookending the festival with two fabulously fun and romantic films, on opening and closing nights,” shares festival director Lisa Rose. “And we’re continuing that theme with the one incredible documentary feature. Queer love, in its many forms, flows through every film in the program.”
The new film from Marco Berger (Horseplay), The Astronaut Lovers, will set the tone on opening night. Two friends reunite in a seaside resort near Buenos Aires and pretend to be a couple, despite the fact one of them is straight. Complications ensue.
The festival promises a sweet and bold finale, with the closing night slot devoted to writer-director Veit Helmer’s dialogue-less Gondola, about two cable car operators who find increasingly inventive ways to communicate as they pass each other in the sky.
Other highlights include the 2024 Frameline Outstanding Documentary Feature award-winner, Fragments of a Life Loved, in which director Chloé Barreau assembles her collection of home movies and photographs to craft a story of her loves spanning decades, also inviting her exes to offer their side of the story.
Australian feature Strange Creatures (Queer Screen’s Marché du Film selection for the Cannes Film Festival 2025) is a comedy-drama about two feuding brothers who set out in a hearse to their old family home in remote Narrabri. Filmmaker Henry Boffin will be in attendance for a Q&A.
Late 1990s-set queer series, Videoland, sees a video rental store clerk watch every sapphic film that she can get her hands on to try to learn how to embrace her newly discovered lesbian identity. Writer-director Jessica Smith, producer Scarlett Koehne and lead actor Emmanuelle Mattana will all be in attendance.
Following their world premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival, Queer Screen audiences will get a chance to see Emmy-nominee Evan Rachel Wood in D.W. Waterson’s queer cheerleading movie Backspot, and Oscar-nominee Elliot Page in Dominic Savage’s Close To You, which Page also developed the story for with Savage, about a trans man returning to his hometown and running into his highschool crush. Other star names to look out for in the lineup include Lukas Gage and Keiynan Lonsdale in Chris Coats’ short film Stay Lost.
Other feature film highlights include Emily Railsback’s lesbian family drama American Parent, 2024 Wicked Queer and Torino Lovers Film Festival award-winning Turtles (Les tortues) about a gay couple of 35 years navigating their relationship, and Marcelo Caetano’s São Paolo-set Queer Palm-nominated coming-of-ager Baby, about a young sex worker surviving on the streets and finding queer family.
Look out for LA Outfest crowd-pleaser Big Boys, Ray Yeung’s (Suk Suk (Twilight’s Kiss)) Sundance and Berlinale award-winning latest feature All Shall Be Well, and the Sydney premiere of Marwan Mokbel’s supernatural horror The Judgement.
The 11th annual Queer Screen Film Festival runs from August 28th to September 1st in Sydney and on-demand nationally from September 2nd – 8th, 2024. For the full lineup and to purchase tickets head to QueerScreen.org.au.
