Queer Screen is calling on cinema lovers to come together at the 32nd Mardi Gras Film Festival in Sydney from 13 to 27 February.
And if you’re not heading east for the Mardi Gras celebrations, highlights from the program will be available to stream, on demand, around the nation from 28 February to 10 March.
Tickets are on sale now at queerscreen.org.au.
“Come for the love of cinema, the love of queer films, and the love of community,” said Festival Director Lisa Rose, who will be moving on from the festival in 2025 after eight years as Festival Director, and prior to that – five years as a volunteer board member.
“The film industry has changed dramatically throughout my time with Queer Screen. The volume of LGBTQIA+ content we see, as well as how and where we see it, continues to evolve,” she said.
“Yet the sense of belonging that comes when the lights dim and a room full of queer people experience a queer story together remains a constant. Even when a film has the audience divided, the feeling of community that envelops us is unifying.”
Lisa Rose’s final festival includes almost 150 of the world’s best LGBTQI+ films, presented across 72 sessions at Event Cinemas at both George Street in Sydney’s CBD and their Hurstville outlet, plus screenings at Dendy Cinemas in Newtown, and Ritz Cinemas in Randwick. Special events at the State Library of NSW and additional screenings at The Rocks Laneway Cinema and Bank Hotel complete the program.
Opening and closing nights
The festival opens with Young Hearts, an adorable, crowd-pleasing, coming of age tale set in rural Belgium, where 14-year-old Elias is navigating his burgeoning feelings for new neighbour, Alexander, with the support of his loving family.
To close the festival, charming French comedy-drama Somewhere in Love also sees the world open up for its main character, fifty-something single mother Nicole, whose unexpected romance with the beguiling Nora offers some respite from her fractured relationship with teenage son, Serge.
Premiere screenings galore
The Queer Screen team say they are thrilled to be hosting the World Première of In Ashes, a raw debut from Denmark-based filmmaker Ludvig C. Poulsen, about an awkward twenty-something who is struggling to get over his ex, and getting hooked on hook-ups in the process.
A total of twenty MGFF25 feature films are Australian Premières, including Drive Back Home, a darkly funny film in which two estranged brothers, played by Alan Cumming and Charlie Creed-Miles, are trapped on a road trip in 1970s Canada with a taxidermised pug.
Three Kilometres to the End of the World, which won the Queer Palm at Cannes and was in the running for the Palme d’Or, has been hailed as a masterpiece. With restrained tension, nuanced performances and stunning cinematography, the film follows a young man’s fight for justice after a homophobic attack in his rural Romanian hometown.
Other standout premières include Lillies Not for Me, a lyrical English period drama about a romance between a novelist and a doctor who believed he could “cure” their homosexuality, and Layla, set in London’s present day queer club scene, where a British Palestinian drag performer meets and falls for a strait-laced marketing executive.
Boundary pushing films
The festival will also screen the film Sebastian from director by Mikko Mäkelä. The film follows aspiring London author Max begins a double life as a sex worker. Adopting the pseudonym “Sebastian”, he uses his uninhibited sexual encounters with older men to research his debut novel. But as the lines between his two identities blur, Max must decide whether his loyalty is to his client’s confidentiality or his career, in this sexually charged, empathetic drama.
Mikko Mäkelä and producer James Watson will be attending for a Q&A session and will also take part in a panel discussing how you take a film from script to screen. They previously collaborated on the film A
Moment in the Reeds.
Riley, from director Banjamin Howard will have it’s Australian premiere at the festival.
This contemporary coming-of-age drama delves into the psyche of Dakota Riley, a repressed high school football star struggling to hide his secret sexual explorations.
But as the façade of his own creation begins to slip, his girlfriend, family and teammates can see something’s amiss.
Capturing hypermasculine sports culture with stirring realism, director Benjamin Howard draws on his own experiences to deliver a fresh, personal take on an age-old theme.
From Mexico comes the erotic drama Demons at Dawn from director Julián Hernández. Intertwined bodies become synchronised souls, when a fiery romance is sparked between go-go dancer Orlando and nursing student Marco.
For the love of chosen family, forever friends, and (mysterious) strangers
An unorthodox love triangle unfolds under the shadow of the AIDS epidemic in To Live, To Die, To Live Again– a moving French melodrama about the power of chosen family. In Love in the Big City, a decade-spanning and vibrant South Korean comedy-drama, a closeted gay man and an outspoken woman become life-long friends
Winner of the Berlinale Teddy Jury Award in 2024 Crossing follows a retiree’s search for her runaway niece in vibrant Istanbul. Ponyboi see an intersex runaway, played by writer River Gallo, in a star-making performance, flees from the New Jersey mob with help from a mysterious cowboy played by WA raised actor Murray Bartlett.
Real-world love
A heartwarming documentary spanning from the 1940s to today, Unusually Normal follows the lives of a family comprising two lesbian grandmothers, four lesbian mothers and one lesbian granddaughter.
I’m Your Venus is a cathartic ode to Venus Xtravaganza, murdered trans star of 1990 ballroom documentary Paris Is Burning. Overflowing with love for its subject, it focuses on her two families (biological and ballroom) as they honour her legacy.
The festivals exceptionally strong documentary program also features profiles of singer/songwriter Ani De Franco (1800-ON-HER-OWN), artist Jürgen Baldiga, who chronicled West Berlin’s 1980s radical queer scene (Baldiga: Unlocked Heart), lesbian feminist Sally Gearhart, an activist in San Francisco in the 1970s and ‘80s (Sally!), and Black trans singer Jackie Shane, who rose to stardom during the 1960s (Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story)
For the love of Liza
To coincide with our Australian premiere screening of Bruce David Klein’s new documentary Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story – a dazzling profile of an enduring gay icon and Hollywood survivor – the festival are thrilled to also be presenting Cabaret on the big screen. Winner of eight Oscars, the film remains as timely now as ever.
Love hurts
A young teacher falls into a destructive path of all-consuming obsession when a passionate and tumultuous love affair is cut short in darkly sexy Brazilian drama Streets of Gloria. Swaggering butch Renuka’s instant chemistry with timid wannabe rapper Devika gives way to romance as they rebel against patriarchal expectations in The Shameless, an extraordinary, haunting drama that premiered at Cannes.
Low budget love
Wickedly funny satire, Kaye Adelaide’s The Rebrand follows lesbian influencer power couple Thistle and Blaire as they commission a documentary about themselves to salvage their image after being cancelled, while Lauren Neal’s Under the Influencer, a pulpy, micro-budget thriller, follows a Black lesbian artist who seeks comeuppance upon discovering a cunning white curator has been exploiting her. Then there’s prolific low-budget Aussie filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay’s take on the festive season in grisly neon slasher, Carnage for Christmas.
All three filmmakers will also appear at a panel discussion on making films in microgenres and intersectional spaces.
For the love of women and song (wine optional)
There will also be a sing-along screening of Sister Act, accompanied by sinful shenanigans from the Sisters and Brothers of The Order of Perpetual Indulgence, Sydney.
Plus, a rare chance to see Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers. It was one of the first ever trans-led feature films. Starring Warhol icon Holly Woodlawn, this ‘70s sketch musical comedy was recently rediscovered after a long time lost. With cameos from Lily Tomlin and Bette Midler (who is said to have turned down the lead in Sister Act because her fans wouldn’t want to see her playing a nun!), it can finally claim the cult audience it’s long deserved.
Retrospective love @ The Rocks Laneway Cinema
Don’t miss the camp classic The Birdcage, in which a gay couple, played by Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, try to convince their son’s ultra-conservative future in-laws they’re not gay. In the equally beloved lesbian classic Imagine Me & You, Rachel (Piper Perabo) locks eyes with Luce (Lena Headey) while walking down the aisle and tries to convince herself she didn’t just make a big mistake.
Tickets are on sale now at queerscreen.org.au.
