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Rainbow Visions Film Festival
Friday, 16 May 2025 until Sunday, 18 May 2025
RAINBOW VISIONS is Edmonton’s LGBTQ2S+ film festival! Launched in 2015, join us for our 10th great year, taking place spring 2025!
Our mandate is to showcase new & emerging filmmaking talent, and we program an equal number of narrative and documentary films, with shorts screening before most features!
RAINBOW VISIONS is produced by the Global Visions Festival Society, a non-profit society that produces 3 Edmonton-based festival each year: Rainbow Visions, NorthwestFest International Documentary Festival, and NorthwestFEARFest Genre Festival.
Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature
Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature
Audience Award for Best Canadian Feature
Jury Award for Best Canadian Short
Jury Award for Best International Short
RAINBOW VISIONS 2025 FILMS
19-year-old Kristi discovers a secret her doctor and parents have kept from her all her life. Her search for the truth uncovers a radical experiment that led to a global medical scandal.
NEW 4K RESTORATION
Lisa Cholodenko’s moody and intimate drama about a young magazine editor who becomes entangled in the alluring but destructive world of a reclusive photographer, beautifully restored in 4K.
Preceded by the short film: 20:15 MEXICO DF
Hairspray (2007) is a vibrant musical comedy about a spirited teen in 1960s Baltimore who fights for racial integration on a popular TV dance show while chasing her dreams and challenging societal norms.
Heightened Scrutiny follows an ACLU lawyer and a coalition of activists and journalists as they battle a wave of anti-trans legislation—centered on a landmark Supreme Court case challenging Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care.
PARADE: Queer Acts of Love & Resistance
Through rarely seen archival footage and first-person accounts Parade: Queer Acts of Love & Resistance spotlights the activism that sparked the rise of Canada’s 2SLGBTQIA+ movement.
Preceded by the short film: Burcu’s Angels
Griffin in Summer is a witty and heartfelt coming-of-age comedy about a precocious teen playwright whose summer plans—and emotions—take a turn when he falls for the charming handyman working at his house for the summer.
A gloriously unhinged camp classic, Mommie Dearest dramatizes Christina Crawford’s harrowing childhood with Hollywood legend Joan Crawford, delivering unforgettable lines, and a Faye Dunaway performance still echoing through pop culture nearly 45 years later.
This shorts package includes:
It Will Always End in the End • Friend of a Friend • Some Kind of Paradise • A Good Dark Roast • Lost Hearts
This phenomenal new documentary celebrates Sally Gearhart's dynamism and complexity and the collective (if chaotic) nature of revolutionary movements and their icons.
Filmed over 21 years, SABBATH QUEEN chronicles Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie’s transformative journey to queer drag-queen visionary, as he challenges tradition, religion, and redefines spiritual survival in the modern world.
It was the Studio 54 of the Prairies, a venue owner John Reid vowed would be a safe place for "gay people and their friends." Flashback is the story of a defiant disco's dance culture, sweat, sex, drugs, and fashion.
I’M YOUR VENUS revisits the life and legacy of trans icon Venus Xtravaganza (“Paris is Burning”), as her biological and ballroom families reunite decades after her tragic murder to honour her memory, seek justice, and discover unexpected connection.
Preceded by the short film: Time for a Eulogy, Bitches
Once reviled and relentlessly protested, William Friedkin's Cruising —a gritty 1980 crime thriller starring Al Pacino—has evolved from controversial lightning rod to critical reappraisal from a new generation of cinephiles.