Breaking Silence

Short

For the last quarter century, Houston native Arden Eversmeyer journeyed across the country to record hundreds of oral "herstories" with a mostly invisible population that is rapidly disappearing. Old Lesbians honors Arden's legacy by animating the resilient, joyful voices she preserved in the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project, from first crush to first love, from the closet to coming out, and finally from loss to connection.

Short

At nightfall, the boxers of the La Frapppppe collective are training in a park in Marseille. Bodies are set into motion and start shaping a community of gestures, sensations, and emotions.

Short

A short queer history of violent police raids on queer bars between the 70s and 2000s, and the rise of LGBTQ+ communities fighting back. Tribute to Joe Rose.

Short

There hasn't been a lesbian bar in San Francisco for almost a decade. Driven by nostalgia for a time when queer women had spaces, Malia Spanyol, a self-identified dyke, sets out to build one for the next generation of women and femmes.

Short

Stud Country, the largest queer country western line dancing event in America, was created to preserve Los Angeles' little known 50+ year queer line dancing tradition. Despite its success and fiercely committed community, the event is set to lose its venue due to gentrification.

Short

A journey into Aly’s world and his personal growth through the eyes of his new furry, Eden. Aly opens up about his next character, Lusia, who will resemble him in every way.

Short

A man comes home to his lover on their anniversary expecting a romantic night of celebration only to find someone tied up in the bathroom.

Short

A traditional Maritime image: three generations of P.E.I. women wash dishes after holiday dinners. Their after-dinner conversations become revealing when one of their own begins his transition.

Feature

In the vein of the Tony award-winning musical Stereophonic, this must-see drama is a Behind the Music-style glimpse of a 2000s Toronto indie band with Fleetwood Mac-like flare ups. With a trans frontman and queer members, The New Normals break boundaries while breaking one another’s hearts. Building off the source material, the novel Heidegger Stairwell by Kayt Burgess, Karen Knox maintains balletic control of multiple perspectives and aesthetics, following how each of the five core members handles firsts: first music video, first phone sex job, first love triangle. Music saves this close-knit crew from quarrels when it’s not causing them, but it’s the in-fighting, the “threads of connection and tension” that keep their audience hungering for more. Will the trans frontman (Lane Webber) stay with his queer girlfriend and songwriting partner (June Laporte) or find a different tune with Lugh (Daniel Gravelle)? Will the band survive or live on only in tribute? These concerns converge in a film charged with envy, creative friendship, and reckless love, and chock-full of pedigreed talent, including co-writing credits from award-winning Canadian writer, Zoe Whittall and festival alumni, Pat Mills as well as original songs from Stars’ Torquil Campbell.

Featurevirtual exclusive

Small towns are no place for secrets. Among the churchgoing folk of a Newfoundland fishing village, Eliza leads a double-life: exploring transgressive photography while managing an unspoken romance with a shunned woman and the insistent advances of a married man. Hearsay only two steps behind. Sneaking around the neighbours, Eliza (Michaela Kurimsky) stages increasingly revealing photoshoots in locations both remote and close to home—perhaps too close. With every new post to her 318K Instagram followers, she imperils the careful balance she’s cultivated between her coexistence with fellow villagers, her burgeoning romance with Toni (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers), and the married man (Peter Mooney) whose desire for her titillates as much as it terrifies. As a church fundraiser she’s helping to organize approaches, so too does a blaze of gossip, and choices are made that could leave her forever shattered. By turns kinky and kind-hearted, Melanie Oates’ second feature explores our wildest selves with a complexity that continues to deepen through to the final striking frame. All the while, embodying a true sense of place, depicting the rough shores and spirited personalities of one of the most isolated—and spectacular—of Canadian locales.

Feature

Torontonian Z, a transmasculine musical theatre performer, has NYC aspirations. The testosterone he’s on has other plans. Facing unpredictable losses and the foreign feeling of his changing body, Z forges connections that reveal how, sometimes, our favourite places are those we have yet to find. Meeting at now-defunct The Beaver, Z (co-writer/producer Breton Lalama) and Danielle (Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah) are smitten. Danielle supports him as he aims for stardom, but falls short: forced to become a barback bartender at Toronto mainstay Squirly’s after a disappointing audition. There, he’s taken under the wing of his cute, charismatic boss, Santi (Xavier Lopez), who knows a lot more about what he’s going through than Z realizes. Although Z can no longer hit Éponine’s notes in Les Misérables, with the help of his vocal coach (Ali Garrison) and a “dream world” goal, he reaches for a more compatible voice. And as we watch Z retrain, we witness actor Breton Lalama do the same in real time, both coming to terms with who they are becoming. Helmed by non-binary filmmaker J Stevens, this is incisive, richly detailed cinema afforded the flow of a life lived authentically.

Short

After deciding to do a Muay Thai competition, a timid, mid-20s Filipino-Canadian woman must train in secret and go against her strict parents, while also falling in love with her coach, who is also a woman.

Documentary

Spoiler alert: chances are if you were watching television in spring 2016, you witnessed the startling peak of the Bury Your Gays trope. LGBTQ+ females from Buffy’s Tara to The 100’s Lexa have gotten the axe and this wry exposé investigates the dismaying trend and ensuing sea change. Bouncing back and forth from Toronto to culture hubs like L.A. and London, Bulletproof unfolds like the plot of a great mystery. There are the victims: queer female characters. The murderers: harried television writers, showrunners, and producers who, for a myriad of reasons that the doc unpacks, have chosen to kill off fan-favourites. And then there are the detectives: a “rainbow network” of journalists, media psychologists, fan community leaders, and many more who dissect the catalysts and impacts of shifting queer depictions. Not to mention the documentarian themself, “gay as hell” TV junkie Regan Latimer on year six of what was supposed to be a one year project, uncovering personal, societal, and scientific revelations alongside their wise-cracking on-screen surrogate, Lindy Zucker. Through clever references and animation, Bulletproof proves that representation has life-or-death stakes and fantasy can be as essential as reality.

Short

A male teenager planning to come out to his father imagines different outcomes while portraying them in different cinematographic genres in his mind.

Short

When her self-help podcast asks her what she wishes to manifest, our hero realizes her desires are outgrowing her current relationship.