Sydney’s Queer Screen Film Festival returns for its 12th annual edition to inject some colour and heat into the wintry southern hemisphere nights. From August 27th to 31st, the festival will present a curated selection of new queer cinema from around the world, including 14 Australian premieres.
“It is an exciting new chapter for Queer Screen,” comments the organization’s CEO Benson Wu. “This new team has worked tirelessly to bring this festival to life in a short timeframe, and we are proud of the strength, diversity and heart that this year’s program delivers. We look forward to welcoming audiences back into cinemas to share in the joy of queer storytelling.”
Opening the festival is Carmen Emmi’s drama Plainclothes starring Russell Tovey and Tom Blyth, which won the US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast at Sundance 2025. Praised for “Blyth and Tovey’s first-rate work” by The Queer Review, this 1990s Upstate New York set story follows a young police officer (Blyth) as he goes undercover to entrap men cruising in a public bathroom, but develops a complicated relationship with one of the men he meets (Tovey).
The Closing Night film, Really Happy Someday, centres on a transmasculine musical theatre performer, Z (co-writer, star Breton Lalama) who loses vocal control after starting testosterone. Commended for its honest portrayal of the day-to-day reality of transitioning., Really Happy Someday received the Best Canadian Feature Award at the 2025 Inside Out Toronto 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival following its world premiere at TIFF. With a delicate, nuanced and compelling central performance by Lalama and assured direction by co-writer J Stevens, the film is enhanced by a soundtrack that features a wide range of trans musicians.
Among the highlights throughout the fest are Sundance award-winners, including Twinless, a whip-smart, wholly original dark comedy starring Dylan O’Brien and writer-director James Sweeney, which won the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and Special Jury Award for Acting for O’Brien; and Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s Cactus Pears (Sabar Bonda), a tender, slow-burn Indian romance between a Mumbai call-centre worker and a goat herder, which took home the World Cinema Dramatic Jury Prize.
Also look out for Outerlands, described by The Queer Review‘s James Kleinmann as an “exquisitely crafted, character-driven queer indie” starring Asia Kate Dillon (read The Queer Review’s exclusive interview with them about the film), and Lea DeLaria; and Sauna, the “super sexy” Danish romantic drama about two men from different worlds: one whose life revolves around the hypermasculine gay sauna where he works, the other navigating the early stages of his transition.
The lineup also features an anniversary screening of the Australian queer classic, Timothy Conigrave’s Holding The Man, at the Sydney Opera House. Marking both the 10th anniversary of Neil Armfield’s film and the 30th anniversary of the original memoir. Holding The Man holds a powerful place in the heart of gay Australia as explored in The Queer Review’s exclusive interview with writer Tommy Murphy about adapting the memoir for stage and screen. The film features performances by Ryan Corr, Craig Stott, Guy Pearce, Anthony LaPaglia, Sarah Snook, Kerry Fox and Camilla Ah Kin.
Other standout selections include France’s Love Letters, fresh from Cannes Critics’ Week, highlighting the blurring of the personal and political in LGBTIQ+ life as a lesbian couple prepares for the birth of their first child (expanding on writer-director Alice Douard’s César Award-winning short film Expecting); and Niñxs, a joyful and quietly revolutionary coming-of-age documentary told through the eyes of a Mexican trans child, which premiered at Visions du Réel.
South Korea is strongly represented with the striking narrative debut Lucky, Apartment, from award-winning documentary filmmaker Kangyu Ga-ram, breaking new ground in Korean queer cinema; and the bold, brash comedy Manok, about finding intergenerational queer friendship and joy in a rural small town.
Closer to home, Sydney filmmaker Bina Bhattacharya makes her feature directorial debut with From All Sides, a subversive and sexually frank portrayal of a seemingly typical middle-class family in Western Sydney unravelling at the seams.
“At a time when people around the world aim to silence and divide the LGBTIQ+ community, Queer Screen continues to offer a vital opportunity to come together and support each other and all the films in this program share that ethos,” comments Andrew Wilkie, Programming & Industry Manager. “Stories of people who feel isolated or unseen finding community, friendship and love. Of perseverance and joy. Every film is a chance to not only see ourselves on screen, but step into someone else’s shoes and gain new perspectives.”
The 12th annual Queer Screen Film Festival runs from August 27th to 31st in Sydney. For the full lineup and to purchase tickets head to QueerScreen.org.au.
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