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QueerFilm Festival Bremen
Tuesday, 21 October 2025 until Sunday, 26 October 2025 Monday, 27 October 2025 until Friday, 31 October 2025
It all started back in 1994, with the idea to accompany the gay and lesbian event "Herbsterwachen" (autumn awakening) by showing queer films at a local cinema in Bremen.
Since then, the queerfilm festival Bremen has taken place annually every autumn, presenting films to the local LGBTI* community and anyone interested in queer films. Today, it is firmly established in the regional cultural landscape and is also a member of QueerScope, an independent co-operation fo queer film festivals all over Germany.
For six days every autumn, the festival takes over the screens and seats of City46, a communcal cinema in Bremen, to present a variety of dramas, comedies, documentaries and short films, selected by the queerfilm team from the current year's productions and submissions - in the original language whenever possible. Discussions with producers and activists are also part of the festival programme.
The audience award has become an important part of the festival. It is given out on the last evening of the festival to the drama, comedy or documentary rated highest by the audience.
We consider our voluntary work an important contribution to cultural policy - creating a space for films depicting alternative lifestyles, particularly those set in gay, lesbian or transgender contexts. Consequently, our programme has since the very beginning differed from that of commercial cinemas in regard to both concept and content. We try to focus especially on films not yet distributed in Germany - either because they're too new or because they're not considered commercially successful. This gives us the opportunity to show many films as national or international premieres.
The festival, through its films as well as the accompanying discussions, exhibitions and interviews, tries to take up current social debates and international developments, not only to educate, but to actually contribute to the discussion.
The festival programme is put together by a committee of about half a dozen volunteers. We want to present a well-balanced selection of gay, lesbian and transgender films, dramas, comedies and documentaries, national and international productions. At least one short film night, themed evenings and queer film classics round off the programme.
21. bis 26. Oktober 2025 in Bremen
27. bis 31. Oktober 2025 in Bremerhaven
2025 films...
In AS YOU ARE, an interabled queer couple prepares to be intimate for the very first time. Before they can take this step, they must confront their insecurities around sexuality and bodily autonomy.
After years in the design world and queer life in Iowa, Marc returns to Guam to create costumes for a children’s play. What begins as a professional project turns into a tender reconnection with his estranged parents in WOULDN’T MAKE IT ANY OTHER WAY.
SKIN offers a sensorial meditation on queer identity, self-discovery, and the body.
In NEO NAHDA, a London barista uncovers traces of a once-thriving cross-dressing community of lesbian, queer, and non-binary people in Lebanon’s past.
Teenager Yael navigates questions of identity in WAKING UP IN VEGAS, caught between his older brother and his queer best friend Aaron. But can their friendship withstand this search for self?
When Zooey Zephyr loses SEAT 31 in the Montana House of Representatives, she turns a public bench into her new “office.” In doing so, she transforms political loss into an opportunity to defend her community, safeguard her identity, and make a pivotal personal choice.
The poetic stop-motion short TWO BLACK BOYS IN PARADISE imagines Eden and Dula’s tender love in a utopian refuge—an escape from the trauma of their past lives.
Frammenti di un percorso amoroso / Fragments of a Life Loved
Todo el silencio / All the Silence
Ninja Motherfucking Destruction
Bajo naranja / Underground Orange
Kurzfilm & Gespräch: Before Then
D / CHN 2024 | Experimentalfilm | R: Menghzu Xue | 30 Min. | englisch-chinesische
For an art project, Mengzhu visits her grandmother and asks her to read a poem aloud. Although the characters are all Chinese, she does not understand what she is saying. The international audience does, though. In this way, Mengzhu can finally express to her what is close to her heart.
The film becomes the starting point for a conversation with Bremen based filmmaker Menghzu Xue about the contemporary conditions of queer and transnational filmmaking. Which local and international structures are helpful and supportive, and which ones cause difficulties? And does coming out actually have to play a role in this?