Le flou des arbres (The Blurring of Trees)

Queerment QuébecShort

Abandoned in the debris of a mine, a dancer is revived by the celestial energy pulsating within him.

Queerment QuébecCompetitionShort

The filmmaker aka Tranie Tronic tells the tale of the incident that inspired their latest album Transgression and brings awareness to the potential dangers of dating men online.

Queerment QuébecCompetitionShort

EXT. DAY - A sunny Sunday morning on a café terrace: Isabelle, an actor whose career is in a rut, meets Johanne, her agent, who might have a new part for her. Tension mounts both at the table and in the surroundings. Will expectations be met?

Queerment QuébecShort

A woman confesses her sins to her priest.

Queerment QuébecCompetitionShort

Five thousand twenty five walks. Fifty-two miles of floors mopped. Seventy hours watching movie stars kiss. Alice, a headstrong elder dyke, navigates environmentally induced illness while she contends with her unique notion of legacy.

Queerment QuébecShort

Set to classical Québecois music and filmed in a colourful, cinematic style, Doux temps explores the sharp contrast between, on one hand, the somewhat routine daily lives of four characters and, on the other, the lyrical sweep of words and music that evoke the amorous passions of the ‘sweet days’ of youth.

Queerment QuébecShort

Struggling actors Ben and Vanessa have been trapped in the performance of a lifetime: their friendship. But not anymore...

Queerment QuébecShort

Jules is bi. Bi as in bisexual. Bi, even though he’s only slept with women. Bi and ready to try his first experience with Samuel, a friend of friend.

Queerment QuébecShort

An apocalyptic work that references world ending asteroids.

CompetitionShort

A middle aged trans man transitions at 44 and observes his changes over a year and nine months, with a looming ongoing news cycle of anti-trans legislation.

CompetitionShort

This morning, Marina has an appointment with Charlie to sell her a mattress. This evening, she will cancel her plane for Reunion. But they don't know that yet.

Made au CanadaCompetitionFeature

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.

CompetitionFeature

PORTUGUESE • ENGLISH ST | Wellington (defiantly nicknamed Baby) trades his detention centre cell for the streets of São Paulo, absorbed into the life of an in-demand “escort” with old school methods. Torn between this erotic father figure, two chosen families, and the mother who left him, Wellington must discern which link is the strongest. Against a backdrop of corrupt cops, vengeful kingpins, and Brazilian ball culture, maybe-18-year-old Wellington (João Pedro Mariano) falls for 42-year-old sex worker cum drug dealer Ronaldo (Ricardo Teodoro), who has a son not much younger than Wellington being raised by lesbian mothers. The two share a charged, teasing bond with yo-yoing power dynamics. Wellington softens Ronaldo, schooling him in voguing’s ebullience and showing him his battle scars, while Ronaldo grounds his protege, giving him boxing lessons while doling out paternal advice and setting strict boundaries. Boundaries that Ronaldo is desperate to maintain and Wellington comes to resent when youthful potential and a biological parent draw him away. Propelled by Marcelo Caetano’s stylish direction, this gritty coming-of-age tale wrestles with themes of love and coercion, considering what’s still possible for a restless heart when a ‘baby’ becomes a man.

Queerment QuébecShort

Maxime and Frédérique, two young adults, meet at a liquor store and experience a great connection amidst disco music and colors. Their relationship will be influenced by something unexpected.

CompetitionDocumentaryVIRTUAL EXCLUSIVE

The work of Two-Spirit, nêhiyaw (Cree) artist George Littlechild took the reality of residential schools head-on decades before it would enter the collective Canadian conscience. A Sixties Scoop survivor, Littlechild uses his “whimsical,” improvised technique to unlock colourful exuberance and long-held trauma. Conor McNally, a Métis filmmaker, honours his journey. Littlechild was given his great grandfather’s name, nanekawâsis, at a Powwow in 2001. Both Littlechild and the eponymously named film embody its meaning: “swift child.” As we pay witness to a childhood shuffled between foster homes and Littlechild’s emergence as a fleet-fingered artist, the documentary makes fluid connections between past and present. Archival footage blends with warmly tinted 16mm interviews of 65-year-old Littlechild, still evolving in his practice, still passing on his deeply felt knowledge of his ancestry and “Rainbow” spirit. Whereas his partner, John Powell, uses art to govern his freewheeling tendencies, Littlechild harnesses paint to break free of his circumscribed daily life, healing himself and his audience through enlightened transcendence. nanekawâsis begins and ends with a sky full of colour, beautifully eliding time, revealing how light and dark, expectancy and reflection are all indispensable parts of life’s circle.

CompetitionShort

Hao Ling, an Asian American emergency doctor, struggles with his guilt and fear of ruining the relationship with his father after coming out. When a patient introduces him to the gaysian party scene, Hao reconnects to his true emotions and takes actions to reunite with his father while learning valuable lessons on relationships.