The 37th BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival opens tonight with Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s outstanding The Stroll which received its world premiere in the US Documentary Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, going on the win that section’s Special Jury Award for Clarity of Vision. It tells the collective history of the transgender... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Interview: filmmaker Lukas Dhont on his Academy Award-nominated Close “I’ve been dreaming about the Oscars since I was young”
Following its Grand Prix-winning premiere at Cannes, writer-director Lukas Dhont's tender, heartbreaking, and healing sophomore feature Close, has gone on to be acclaimed at festivals around the world, and is among the five works nominated as Best International Feature Film at this weekend's 95th Academy Awards. Beautifully shot by cinematographer Frank van den Eeden, Close... Continue Reading →
LGBTQ Critics announce winners of 14th Dorian Film Awards – Everything Everywhere All at Once named Film of the Year
GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics has just revealed the winners of its 14th Dorian Film Awards, with Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's breathtaking Everything Everywhere All at Once named both Film of the Year and LGBTQ Film of the Year. Distributed by A24, the genre-defying movie which features a touching storyline between a... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: Wet Sand ★★★★
Georgian queer cinema is in the spotlight again with Elene Naveriani’s evocative Wet Sand, a heartbreaking look at the power of repression in a parochial community and the hate that lurks behind the faces we see everyday. Amnon (Gia Agumava) runs the local café, serving beers and meals to the locals. He’s a calm, stable... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Interview: filmmaker Goran Stolevski on queer romance Of An Age “it’s more emotionally autobiographical than literal”
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 →
Exclusive Interview: Jose Colon & Cooper Koch on queer body-horror Swallowed “it’s not flashy nudity it’s part of the story”
With Sundance award-winning filmmaker Carter Smith's sexy and unsettling queer horror Swallowed now available on demand and digital in the US, two of its stars, Cooper Koch and Jose Colon, speak exclusively with The Queer Review's editor James Kleinmann about how they got involved, shooting in a cabin in the woods in rural Maine, working... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Interview: Simon Hunt on the legacy of queer Australian filmmaker Stephen Cummins ahead of Mardi Gras retrospective
As part of this month's 30th anniversary Mardi Gras Film Festival, coinciding with Sydney WorldPride, Queer Screen will be hosting a retrospective of gay Australian filmmaker and Queer Screen co-founder, Stephen Cummins. Cummins was a leading light in the Australian queer cinema scene of the 1980s and 90s, with his work shown in festivals around... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: Punch ★★★1/2
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 →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: Horseplay (Los agitadores) ★★★★
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 →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: Elephant (Słoń) ★★★★
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 →