Receiving its world premiere at SXSW 2025 as part of the festival's Narrative Short Competition, writer-director Andy Reid's Brief Somebodies offers an enticing premise. The film opens with twenty-something actor-filmmaker Joel (Aldrin Bundoc) reviewing self-tape submissions for an unusually personal role he is casting, an actor to play opposite him in a scene that will... Continue Reading →
Jun Li's alluring third feature, Queerpanorama (眾生相), received its world premiere at the 75th Berlinale—aptly enough in the festival's Panorama section—where it was in competition for the 39th Teddy Award. Strikingly shot in black and white, it is a bold and inventive meditation on self-discovery that really got under my skin. The protagonist, listed in... Continue Reading →
"In space no one can hear you howl with laughter!" This is the queer animated scifi musical comedy you've been looking for. Co-writer-directors Leela Varghese and Emma Hough Hobbs made a splash at the 75th Berlinale with their debut feature, Lesbian Space Princess, which received its world premiere there last week. It went on to... Continue Reading →
Early noughties indie rock pic, We Forgot To Break Up, tells the story of the band The New Normals as they rise from high school friends to rock stardom before the emotions that fuel their music start to rip them apart. Adapted from Kayt Burgess’ novel, Heidegger Stairwell, there are some familiar beats here, from... Continue Reading →
Star high school football player Dakota Riley (Jake Holley) is feeling the pressure. His girlfriend Skylar (Riley Quinn Scott) wants to have sex, but he’s resisting. His best friend Jaeden (Colin McCalla), who is temporarily living with him, seems to be sending out flirty vibes. While his former star-athlete dad Carson (Rib Hillis), who is... Continue Reading →
Danish drama In Ashes (Se Gennem Aske), which world premieres at Queer Screen's Mardi Gras Film Festival, follows a gay young man struggling to come to terms with his first heartbreak. Writer-director Ludvig C. Poulsen leaves the audience grasping for details as they are gradually revealed, forming an incomplete but fraught picture of modern love.... Continue Reading →
Things are ominous in Manfred Oldenburg’s documentary The Last Taboo (Das letzte Tabu), which explores the lives of gay football (soccer) players. Assembling most of the currently publicly-identifying gay players, along with sports commentators, psychologists, and campaigners, Oldenburg takes us through the tragic history of out players and the current state of the game. Despite... Continue Reading →
Two former lovers reconnect in New York City after decades apart in director Romas Zabarauskas' fourth feature The Writer (Kirjanik). Lithuanian author Kostas (Bruce Ross) has written a novel that fictionalizes elements of his life and that of his old flame, Russian-born Lithuanian Dima (Jamie Day). Between the two men there lingers a melancholy and... Continue Reading →
Oscar Wilde once called homosexuality “the love that dare not speak its name” (technically, he was quoting his lover Bosie), and that’s the energy that infuses Duino, the debut feature from actor-turned-filmmaker Juan Pablo Di Pace (The Mattachine Family) and editor-director Andrés Pepe Estrada (Argentina, 1985). It’s a contemplative tale of lost gay love that... Continue Reading →
Writer-director Marco Calvani's sweet-hearted emotional drama High Tide succeeds largely thanks to the excellent and honest lead performance by Marco Pigossi as Lourenço, a gay Brazilian in Provincetown left adrift by a series of life events. Stranded in P'town, Lourenço is making a living doing under the table work as a cleaner and handyman. He... Continue Reading →
