Exclusive Interview: Joe Bell star Reid Miller “it’s an honor to tell the world about Jadin’s legacy, how kind he was & what a light he was”

One of the standout acting performances at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival came from 21-year-old Reid Miller who portrays gay teenager Jadin Bell opposite Mark Wahlberg in Joe Bell. Based on true events, with a screenplay by the Oscar-winning duo being Brokeback Mountain, Diana Ossana and the late Larry McMurtry, the film follows the... Continue Reading →

July 22, 2021 0

Exclusive Interview: Jeffrey Friedman on his Oscar-winning decades-long filmmaking partnership with Rob Epstein

This Pride Month the Criterion Channel is showcasing the Oscar-winning work of filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman with the eight film collection, Pride and Protest. In 1977, Friedman, who was working as an assistant editor in New York, was struck by the power of queer filmmakers putting queer lives on screen when he encountered... Continue Reading →

June 23, 2021 9

Exclusive Interview: kiki ball legend Christopher “Afrika” Quarles on their debut movie role as Mother McQueen in Port Authority “who you see on screen is me”

Writer-director Danielle Lessovitz's Port Authority made history at Cannes in 2019, when it world premiered in the Un Certain Regard section, becoming the first film competing at the festival to feature a trans woman of colour—Leyna Bloom—in a lead role. Meanwhile some of the movie's cast, including Christopher "Afrika" Quarles, memorably turned the festival's red... Continue Reading →

May 25, 2021 1

Exclusive Interview: “we are queer creators pushing our way into a straight space” filmmakers Ng Choon Ping & Sam H. Freeman on their SXSW short Femme

Among the queer highlights at last month's SXSW Online 2021 was the short film Femme, by co-writers-directors Ng Choon Ping and Sam H. Freeman. The film stars I May Destroy You's Paapa Essiedu as Jordan, a femme queer man in London who leaves the safety of a night out clubbing with his friends and gets... Continue Reading →

April 15, 2021 2

Film Review: Moffie ★★★★★

As writer-director Oliver Hermanus' Moffie opens in Apartheid South Africa in 1981, Nicholas (Kai Luke Brümmer) has just turned 16 making him, along with all other white men of his age, eligible for mandatory military service at a time when the country is engaged in a military operation at the border with Soviet-backed Angola in... Continue Reading →

April 11, 2021 4

SXSW Online 2021 Film Review: Swan Song ★★★★★

Writer-director Todd Stephens returns to his hometown, and the setting of his 1998 gay coming of age movie Edge of Seventeen—Sandusky, Ohio—for his latest feature Swan Song, which received its world premiere at SXSW Online today. Screen legend Udo Kier stars as Pat Pitsenbarger, a retired gay hairdresser living a monotonous existence in a hospital-like... Continue Reading →

March 18, 2021 1

BFI Flare 2021 Film Review: Rūrangi ★★★★1/2

Often films with a message are so busy driving that message home that they become one-note. Rūrangi, which plays this month's virtual 35th BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival, doesn’t fall into that trap. By placing this transgender homecoming tale into a broader, intersectional context of identity—gender, sexual, cultural—it rises above them to become a... Continue Reading →

March 9, 2021 0

BFI Flare 2021 Film Review: Sublet ★★★★

Veteran Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox's outstanding new feature Sublet, co-written with Itay Segal, opens with the arrival of a jetlagged and disorientated fifty something gay man, Michael (The Inheritance's John Benjamin Hickey) to bustling Tel Aviv. He's a travel writer for The New York Times who has come to uncover the "real" city over a... Continue Reading →

March 3, 2021 2

Exclusive Interview: Sundance horror Knocking star Cecilia Milocco & filmmaker Frida Kempff: “I didn’t want to exploit the female body. We’re so used to seeing that & I’m tired of it”

Frida Kempff's debut narrative feature Knocking (Knackningar), which world premiered at Sundance, is a compelling psychological horror that follows Molly (Cecilia Milocco) in her determination to find the source of the mysterious knocking sounds she can hear from her new apartment, while still grieving the loss of her girlfriend. Read our ★★★★ review of the... Continue Reading →

February 18, 2021 2

Mardi Gras Film Festival 2021 Review: My First Summer ★★★★ 1/2

There is something quintessentially Australian about finding privacy in a wide expanse of nature, and My First Summer uses the depths of Australian forests as a furtive playground for big emotions. A teenage girl, Grace (Maiah Stewardson), witnesses a reclusive writer, Veronica Fox (Edwina Wren), commit suicide in a local lake. She also spies another... Continue Reading →

February 16, 2021 1