When Roger Ross Williams met Saúl Armendáriz, better known as Cassandro, for a 2016 documentary he was directing for The New Yorker—The Man Without a Mask—the filmmaker immediately knew he'd found the subject of his first scripted narrative feature. Making the move from amateur wrestling in El Paso, Armendáriz became a Mexican-American icon with the... Continue Reading →
TIFF 2023 Film Review: Toll (Pedágio) ★★★★
Following last year's Charcoal (Carvão), Brazilian filmmaker Carolina Markowicz returns to TIFF for the world premiere of her captivating sophomore feature Toll (Pedágio) and to receive the festival's Emerging Talent Award. Maeve Jinkings in Carolina Markowicz's Toll (Pedágio) which receives its world premiere at the 48th Toronto International Film Festival. Courtesy of TIFF. Luis Armando... Continue Reading →
Queer Screen Film Festival 2023 Review: Drifter ★★★1/2
Eat. Sleep. Rave. Repeat. That’s a reductive way of looking at the plot of Drifter, Hannes Hirsch’s look at young queer life Berlin. Moritz (Lorenz Hochhuth) has moved to Berlin to be with his boyfriend Jonas (Gustav Schmidt), but it’s quickly clear that Jonas isn’t happy with this scenario. When Jonas tells Moritz he wants... Continue Reading →
Queer Screen Film Festival 2023 Review: Lie With Me (Arrête avec tes mensonges) ★★★★★
Director and co-screenwriter Olivier Peyon exquisitely captures both the heady ups and downs of young gay romance and the melancholy of memory in Lie With Me (Arrête avec tes mensonges), an adaptation of Phillipe Besson’s acclaimed novel. Excellently shot and filled with pitch perfect-performances, this is a real treat. Novelist Stéphane Belcourt (Guillaume de Tonquédec)... Continue Reading →
Queer Screen Film Festival 2023 Review: Commitment To Life ★★★1/2
Prolific documentary filmmaker Jeffrey Schwarz’s (Vito, I Am Divine) latest feature, Commitment to Life, valuably adds more threads to the tapestry of our understanding of the height of the AIDS crisis in the United States by focusing on Los Angeles and the entertainment industry, in particular the work of the AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA).... Continue Reading →
Three’s Company – Film Review: Passages ★★★★
Ira Sachs’ films tend to examine the complexities of adult relationships using a quiet, dry naturalistic tone which has often reminded me of the style of French New Wave cinema. So it feels fitting that his latest, Passages, his fifth collaboration with writing partner Mauricio Zacharias, would have Paris as its background. Featuring three stellar... Continue Reading →
Outfest LA 2023 Film Review: Rotting In The Sun ★★★★
Some of my favorite filmmakers say or show things nobody else will dare expose to the world, whether it’s the dark underbelly or something as commonplace yet rarely seen as graphic nudity and sex. They let their characters have flaws, outsized egos, mood swings, and make mistakes, all parts of the human experience which cookie... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Interview: Georgia Oakley & Rosy McEwen on 1980s-set lesbian drama Blue Jean “what happens in the film is still so relevant”
Writer-director Georgia Oakley’s impressive directorial debut Blue Jean is a compelling character study set in northern England in 1988, as Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government is about to pass the notorious Section 28 of the local Government Act which stigmatized the nation's gay and lesbian population, stoking homophobia—both societal and internal—at the height of the HIV/AIDS... Continue Reading →
LGBTQ+ highlights at Tribeca Festival 2023
With the 2023 Tribeca Festival opening tonight in New York, running until June 18th, we take a look at some of the LGBTQ+ highlights in this year's exciting lineup of narrative, documentary, and animated feature films and shorts. The fact the festival lands in the city during Pride Month is not lost on Faridah Gbadamosi,... Continue Reading →
The Stroll opens 37th BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival running till March 26th – take a look at the highlights
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 →