The Melbourne Queer Film Festival returns 10–21 November in cinemas and online from 21–27 Nov, delivering a robust international and home-grown program of LGBTQI+ stories. The 149 films, 35 Australian premieres 103 sessions across the city speak to MQFF’s mission to explore new Queer horizons and stories in the ever-expanding cinematic landscape.
For the uninitiated or returning queer cinema explorers, here are some choice highlights.
Queer Brazil
This year we shine a spotlight on the striking new voices and films coming out of a Brazil. Significantly this is a country where violence against LGBTIQ+ folk has reached epidemic proportions.
However, this showcase is a celebration of the talent coming out of Brazil and speaks to the resilience and tenacity of the queer community. Two of our gala titles – Private Desert and Uýra: The Rising Forest are part of this focus, as well as a trio of very distinct dramas that include Mars One, a gentle family saga set in the early stages of (now former) President Jair Bolsonaro's election win.
Speaking of Bolsonaro, his response to the COVID-19 pandemic is at the heart of Follow the Protocol, which captures the swirling paranoia and fear this response (or lack thereof) created in its citizens. Focusing in on a hapless bear of a man whose attempts to get laid safely during lockdowns are thwarted by the carelessness his paramours take in following health protocols, this is a funny, droll and very relatable slice of life under COVID.
From one pandemic to another, the sobering The First Fallen draws it dramatic well from an earlier pandemic and the devastating destruction HIV/AIDS rained upon the queer and creative communities.
Wandering Heart (2021)
Leonardo Brzezicki's passionate Argentinian drama centres on a gay man slowly unravelling after the breakup of a long-term relationship – while diving headfirst into an endless swirl of partying, anonymous group sex and drugs. The only thing keeping him afloat is his relationship with his teenage daughter. Wandering Heart brings to mind the great films of American indie filmmaker John Cassavetes. Lead Leonardo Sbaraglia gives a very raw, intense and unfiltered performance.
See it at ACMI
Wet Sand (2022)
We don’t get too many Queer films coming out of Georgia – the last one was the rapturous And Then We Danced (2019). Elene Nareviani's delicate drama Wet Sand takes on small-town homophobia, as a young queer woman returns to her family village to settle her grandfather’s deceased estate, who was also grappling with his sexuality. Secrets and lies are at the heart of this engrossing drama of small-town prejudice and the courage to confront it.
See it at ACMI
My Emptiness and I (2022)
In the latest feature from Adrián Silvestre, the director of Sediments – which MQFF screened back in April – non-actors are again brought in to create a narrative fiction around a young trans woman in Barcelona going through the process of transition and discovering the joy of sex and her trans body. The camera’s gaze is intimate and ultimately joyful.
Ultraviolette and the Blood-Spitters Gang (2021)
Well, this wins the best title of the festival. Unfolding in a grainy, dreamlike, black-and-white 1920s France, Ultraviolette is a beautifully stitched together archive-as-memory essay film where the filmmaker uses a series of letters from her grandmother to a female lover to recount a remarkable story of forbidden love, illness, death and kicking against societal expectations and conditioning.
See it at ACMI
Hypochondriac (2022)
A gay man’s life begins to unravel when he starts to experience visions (or are they?) of a sinister being – a manifestation of lingering childhood trauma. This very personal horror film touches on themes of mental illness and family legacy, that doesn’t feel exploitative but will surely unnerve and freak you out! Think a queer Donnie Darko but bloodier.
This is part of a larger focus on Queer horror and genre films called Freak Out! It's refreshing to see the mainstream has finally caught up with something queers knew all along – we love horror films! Not surprising really, we know a little something about being labelled as the other, outcast or monstrous.
Girl Picture (2022)
A spirited coming-of-age Finnish film about female camaraderie centred around a group of teenagers on the cusp of womanhood, grappling with love, sex and queer desire. What’s refreshing is the candour and glee these women grapple head-on (and on their own terms) the dreams and experiences that will inform their adulthood.
See it at ACMI
Retrospective: Pink Flamingos (1972)
Fifty, filthy and fabulous as ever, this 50th anniversary retrospective screening of John Waters' transgressive middle finger to everything staid and conventional still has the power to scandalise (that ending is still unmatched in shock value) and the star power of Divine is a glorious sight to behold. Queer youth take note, if John Waters and Divine aren’t role models, we have failed you!
See it at ACMI
Black As U R (2020)
A searing and sobering documentary that examines the complexities around being black and gay in the Black Lives Matter era. Director Micheal Rice tackles head-on being a repressed minority within a community already fighting for their own agency and equality. Black As U R brought to mind another landmark queer documentary about homophobia within the black community, Marlon Riggs, Black Is... Black Ain’t (1995). Rice asks an essential question: what voices are given agency when marginalised communities are fighting for equality?
See it at ACMI
Victorian Queens + The Alexander Ball (2022)
These two Australian mini-documentaries showcase how the queer community goes about creating inclusive spaces that speak to the diversity that makes up the LGBTIQ+ rainbow. The focal point being the vibrant drag scene in Naarm Melbourne and the propulsive ballroom scene in Meeanjin Brisbane.