2024 films...

MOTHER SAIGON / Má Sài Gòn

by Khoa Lê

Thursday June 13  4:00pm

2023 | Canada | Documentary | 98 min.

World Premiere Hot Docs, Special Jury Prize RDM Best Canadian Feature

In Saigon, family culture carries on as it has for centuries, even when blood ties are broken. Through a mosaic of intimate portraits, Má Sài Gòn explores humanity’s universal desire for love, acceptance, connection and belonging through an LGBTQ+ lens. The film is a love letter – a bittersweet ode to a comforting yet disturbing mother, to a city that is as liberating as it is oppressive.

Opening Night Premiere

ANY OTHER WAY: THE JACKIE SHANE STORY

by Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee

Thursday June 13  6:30pm

2024 | Canada | Documentary | 99 min.

Winner, DGC Special Jury Prize – Canadian Feature Documentary

Once you’ve heard Jackie Shane sing, you’ll never forget it. Yet, after shattering barriers as one of pop music’s first Black trans performers, this trail-blazing icon vanished from the spotlight at the height of her fame. From modest beginnings in Nashville, Shane soon recognized her talents and, in her late teens, made her way to Boston and Montreal, working the nightclub circuit while taking the stage with Frank Motley, a musician known for playing two trumpets at once. Her arrival in Toronto during its 1960s music explosion made her a highly sought-after headlining act who seemed destined to take her place among the R & B stars of the era. Blending her music with never-released phone conversations and soulful animated re-enactments, Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story brings Shane back to life in her own words, finally providing the recognition she so rightly deserves and introducing her to a generation fighting for their right to be their true selves.

Pride vs. Prejudice

by Darrin Hagen

Friday June 14  4:00pm

2024 | Canada | Documentary | 80 min.

Pride vs. Prejudice delves into the riveting narrative of the Vriend v. Alberta case, where Delwin Vriend, an unlikely hero, courageously battles against discrimination from a government determined to deny his human rights . Uncover the twists and turns that unfold as Vriend's pursuit of justice challenges societal biases, culminating in a ground-breaking Canadian Supreme Court ruling in 1998 that confronts prejudice and sets a transformative precedent for LGBTQ+ rights that is cited around the world.

LANGUE ÉTRANGÈRE

by Claire Burger

Friday June 14  6:30pm

2024 | France/Germany/Belgium | Romance Drama | 105 min.

Two Nominations at Berlinale 2024- Golden Lion and Queer Lion

Fanny a 17 ans et elle se cherche encore. Timide et sensible, elle peine à se faire des amis de son âge. Lorsqu'elle part en Allemagne pour un séjour linguistique, elle rencontre sa correspondante Lena, une adolescente qui rêve de s’engager politiquement. Fanny est troublée. Pour plaire à Lena, elle est prête à tout

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Two penpals from France and Germany navigate an in-person relationship in Claire Berger’s coming-of-age drama. Love, familial angst and the future of Europe mix together in a compelling mix in Langue Etrangere, a Franco-German female coming-of-age story about crossing borders, both geographically and emotionally.

SEBASTIAN

by Mikko Mäkelä

Friday June 14  9:00pm

2024 | UK | Drama | 110 min.

Official Selection Sundance 2024

In this queer drama, we follow Max, a 25-year-old freelance writer and aspiring novelist who seems well on his way to success in London’s cultural spheres. Yet by night, he finds a different kind of exhilaration as a sex worker with the pseudonym Sebastian, meeting men via an escorting platform. Max uses his experiences as Sebastian to fuel his stories and the worthy debut novel that he has been longing to write, finally seems within reach. As Max increasingly struggles to remain in control of a delicately balanced double-life, he must reckon with whether Sebastian is merely a writer’s tool in their quest for the ultimate sense of first-hand authenticity –or whether something more is at stake.

LOITERING WITH INTENT FF

by Eve Jablonkay

Saturday June 15  1:00pm

2024 | USA | Documentary | 88 min.

A deeply thoughtful and intimate look at a group of male dancers and sex workers in West Hollywood.

CORA BORA

by Hannah Pearl Utt

Saturday June 15  3:00pm

2023 | USA | Comedy | 92 min.

2 wins/nom including Reframe Stamp Winner

As a self-important indie artist in Portland, Cora considered herself a big fish in a little pond. So she sets off to make it in LA. Confident she can maintain her open relationship with her girlfriend back home, she wastes no time trying to seduce as many folks in Los Angeles she crosses paths with. When Cora (Meg Stalter) puts her fledgling music career and life of random hookups on hold to go back home to win her girlfriend back, she realizes it’s much more than her love life that needs salvaging.

I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE

by M.H. Murray

Saturday June 15  5:00pm

2023 | Canada | Drama | 105 min.

World Premiere TIFF 2023

As Benjamin, a working-class musician and gay immigrant, grapples with the aftermath of a traumatic sexual assault by a stranger, he faces the daunting challenge of securing access to costly HIV preventative medication. Amidst this struggle, he finds himself drawn into a delicate dance of romance, navigating the complexities of new love.

IT'S ONLY LIFE AFTER ALL

by Alexandrai Bombach

Saturday June 15  5:00pm

2023 | USA | Documentary | 123 min.

7 wins / noms including SXSW

With 40 years of making music as the iconic folk-rock band Indigo Girls, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers have made their mark as musicians, songwriters and dedicated activists. They have represented radical self-acceptance to many, leading multiple generations of fans to say, “the Indigo Girls saved my life.”

Still, Amy and Emily battled misogyny, homophobia and a harsh cultural climate chastising them for not fitting into a female pop star mold. With joy, humour and heartwarming earnestness, Sundance award-winning director Alexandria Bombach brings us into a contemporary conversation with Amy and Emily—alongside decades of the band's home movies and intimate present-day verité.

THE PEOPLE’S JOKER

by Vera Drew

Saturday June 15  10:00pm

2022 | USA | Parody | 92 min.

2 wins/nominations- Outfest Winner Best North American Narrative Feature

This revolutionary DIY parody film and hilarious reimagining of the classic autobiographical coming-of-age story follows an unconfident, closeted trans girl as she moves to Gotham City to make it big as a comedian by joining the cast of UCB Live - a government-sanctioned late night sketch show in a world where comedy has been outlawed. As mainstream success eludes our heroine, leading her to unite with a ragtag team of rejects, misfits, and a certain love interest named Mister J, "Joker the Harlequin" is born again as a confident (and psychotic) joker on a collision course with the city's fascist caped crusader. Vats of feminizing chemicals, sexy cartoon interludes, scarecrow psychiatrists, CGI Lorne Michaels, and psychedelic gender dysphoria all play supporting roles. Helmed by writer/director/editor/star Vera Drew and using her own life experiences as a basis for the film, THE PEOPLE'S JOKER is a deeply personal journey that's as much documentary as it is parody.

ANALOGUE REVOLUTION:
How Feminist Media Changed the World

by Marusya Bociurkiw

Sunday June 16  1:00pm

2024 | Canada | Documentary | 90 min.

Flush with contributions from Canadian political lesbians, this feature-length documentary traces the rise and fall of analogue feminist media that preceded the both digital technology and the MeToo era. From Halifax to Vancouver, feminist storytellers of the 1970s to 1990s took hold of then-cutting-edge technology to document everything from racism in the women's movement, to how to insert a diaphragm. Funny, smart, and sometimes heartbreaking stories from some of Canada's most important media makers and thinkers climax with the Montréal Massacre, followed by targeted government cutbacks. The film concludes with a resurgence: young BIPOC feminists using analogue strategies to create new feminist digital networks.

DESIRE LINES

by Jules Rosskam

Sunday June 16  3:15pm

2024 | USA | Hybrid Doc | 81 min.

Desire Lines is a hybrid feature film that blends personal interviews, archival materials, and narrative fiction as a framework for exploring the complicated and often unwritten history of transmasculine sexuality. Testimonials from transgender men both past and present dissect how cultural expectations, political agendas, and gatekeeping practices shape the locus of desire. The film pivots between fantasy, fiction, and fact using the letters and interviews of Lou Sullivan as the historical core. Interspersed throughout are clips of the heart-wrenching final interviews between psychiatrist Dr. Ira Pauly and Lou in his final days before succumbing to AIDS. Alongside the contemporary oral histories from a diverse group of transmen across the US, participants candidly discuss the evolution of their desires and illuminate their struggles with gender (non)conformity, fetishization, transphobia, safer sex, and sexual racism.

I SAW THE TV GLOW

by Jane Schoenbrun

Sunday June 16  5:00pm

2024 | USA | Horror-Drama | 100 min.

Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack. With a distinctive visual aesthetic that enhances its emotionally resonant narrative, I Saw the TV Glow further establishes writer-director Jane Schoenbrun as a rising talent.

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Best of Queer Shorts  Francophone

le 13 juin a 14h / Thursday  2:00 pm   80 min.

Retrouvailles inconnues: Les francoqueers à Vancouver avant et après l'an 2000

par Amélia Simard

Canada | Documentary 15 min.  French w/ English subtitles

Les maladies extravagantes

par Raphaël Deslandes

France | Fantasy, 22 min.  French w English subtitles

Camille, Marc, Michelle et moi

par Jonathan Lemieux

Switzerland | Documentary | 22 min.  French w/ English subtitles

Drag You

par Nadia Koro, Hadrien Daigneault-Roy, Sascha Cowan

Canada | Experimental | 21 min.  English and French

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Best of Queer Shorts  Spanish/Latino/South American

Los domingos que quedan/ The Remaining Sundays

by Manolo Pavón

Spain | Drama, 17 min.

Os Animais Mais Fofos e Engraçados do Mundo

Brazil | Drama | 23 min.  Portugese w/ English subtitles

Ausencias/ Absences

by Alfonso Palazon

Spain | Documentary | 20 min.  Spanish w/ English subtitles

Catboy

by Cristian Sitjas

Spain | Drama | 13 min.

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Best of Queer Shorts  Open Category 1

How to eat a Rainbow

by Charles Romeo Courville

Canada | Animation | 7 min.

A-okay

by J Fitzpatrick

Canada | Documentary | 7 min.)

Single Use

by Finn Hyndman

New Zealand | Drama | 11 min.

Parker and the Green Dress

by Kristen Wolf

USA | Drama | 23 min.

Piecht

by Luka Lara Steffen

Germany | Drama | 30 min.

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Best of Queer Shorts  Open Category 2

Safety State

by Jeanette L. Buck

Canada | Documentary | 15 min.

Sinzere: Amplify her voice

by Salima Stanley-Bhanji

3 min.

Love In Transition

by Warangkana Chomchuen

USA | Documentary | 23 min.

Subiksha Subramani: Amplify her voice

by Salima Stanley-Bhanji

3 min.

The Last Take

by Brian Foyster

USA | Drama | 14 min.

Sweethearts

by Rainer Sellien

Germany | Drama | 20 min.

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