Situations spiral out of control and the classes clash in the juicy lesbian drama, The Origin of Evil (L'origine du mal). Money, murder, and the design choices of the nouveau riche fill the screen in this darkly comic-thriller. Stéphane (a wonderful performance by Call My Agent’s Laure Calamy) works in a factory, packaging anchovies all... Continue Reading →
Writer-director-editor Goran Stolevski's achingly romantic and emotionally potent sophomore feature, Of An Age, opened Queer Screen's 30th Mardi Gras Film Festival this week and is playing in US cinemas from today. The Macedonian-born, Australian-raised queer filmmaker followed his Sundance award-winning short, Would You Look At Her, by directing several episodes of the fourth season of... Continue Reading →
A gigolo, a drag queen, and a porn star scheme their way to a motherload of cash in fashion photographer James Demitri’s feature debut as writer-director, The Winner Takes It All. This film is utter trash. That’s not a read, it’s the aesthetic. This is a deliberately, deliciously trashy comedy caper that won’t come anywhere... Continue Reading →
In the 1970s, while the rest of the world was struggling to show LGBTQ+ characters as anything other than jokes or morality tales, one country led the way with fully-fledged gay characters front and centre. Australia’s Number 96 was a sexy soap opera about the lives of people sharing an apartment building, putting sympathetic gay... Continue Reading →
New Zealand filmmaker Welby Ings’ debut feature, Punch, lives up to its title with some powerful drama, stunning visuals, and a sexy subject. Jim (Jordan Oosterhof) is a rising boxer on the eve of his first professional fight, trained by his father (Tim Roth). Their lives are lived in service to Jim’s boxing career with... Continue Reading →
The fine line between straight boys “being boys” and homoeroticism is on display in Marco Berger’s latest feature, Horseplay (Los agitadores), that leans into the liminal spaces of male sexuality and “manhood”. A group of twenty-something young Argentinian men are vacationing together in a luxury villa. Freed from the constraints of parents and family, the... Continue Reading →
The autumnal landscape of southern Poland shines in writer-director Kamil Krawczycki’s new feature, Elephant (Słoń), adding fresh layers to the familiar tale of a rural young man discovering his sexuality in a homophobic town. Bartek (Jan Hrynkiewicz) works multiple jobs to support himself and his mother, looking after their farm animals by day and helping... Continue Reading →
Basketball, teen angst, social media, and family drama combine in Golden Delicious, a tale of an Asian-Canadian high schooler dealing with the claustrophobic impact of everyone else's expectations. Jake (Cardi Wong) is a good kid with a sweet girlfriend in Vancouver whose parents run a local Chinese restaurant. But the pressure is mounting. Nearing graduation,... Continue Reading →
An experimental blend of film, poetry, song and more, Shall I Compare You to a Summer’s Day? (Bashtaalak sa'at) is an art piece that defies linear narrative or easy interpretation. We may start with a play on Shakespeare, but where we’ll end up…well, that's anyone’s guess. Egyptian filmmaker Mohammad Shawky Hassan has given us a... Continue Reading →
When a bullied gay teen and his discreetly gay teacher are stranded in a complex cave system, they both need to drop their pretenses and learn to survive in order to escape in writer-director Roman Němec's claustrophobic feature debut, Where Butterflies Don’t Fly. Also there are sandwiches, but we’ll get to that later. Daniel (Daniel... Continue Reading →
