The Lily & The Scorpion

Short

A woman turning 30 impulsively gives herself a dramatic haircut moments before hosting her birthday dinner, and it’s fine—it’s totally fine! Bangs is a paranoia-fueled comedy about one woman’s need for recognition and what happens when that recognition never comes.

Short

A young woman and her friend are led to a metamorphic realization when they ponder the nature of dreams.

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.

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.

Short

A young trans man returns to his family’s farm in rural southern Ontario following his grandfather’s death, and must navigate the discomforts of familial rural life with his father.

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 the 100th 'The Thursday Testo,' (TTT), the tri-languistical references such as the Roman and Korean (Hangeul) alphabets and the Japanese syllabic (Katana) alphabet of the word TRANS on a comedy sketch by Kě.

Short

A young woman and her friend are led to a metamorphic realization when they ponder the nature of dreams.

Short

I asked various AI to create images and narratives of black wonder womxn fighting in Florida. These are their responses: White supremacism, sexism, homotransphobia are spreading across the web. Let’s play with it and get back some power.

Short

Between loads of laundry at the corner laundromat, Cooper shares the tumultuous story of her gender reassignment journey.

Short

Cole, a resilient transgender man, navigates his coming out journey within the confines of an all-girls school, while his mother confronts her own emotional struggles. Together, they learn to push societal norms and embrace the power of acceptance.

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

Six longtime friends—and one enticing “nymph”—trek to Nova Scotia’s scenic eastern shore to attend a Good Riddance party in celebration of Darcy’s divorce. There, amongst long pours of wine, tangled histories collide in uproarious ways in this wistful dark comedy. Darcy (Lesley Smith) is finally free of matrimony. But that puts her in the sights of jittery heartthrob Dax (Hilary Adams), who has a habit of using sex and her music career as a balm. Her other friends are there for guidance, but they too have some major distractions: “boozebag” Lucy (Jessica Marie Brown) is reeling from a breakup, Lauren (Nicole Steeves) is insecure about the wandering eye of Phoebe (Faly Mevamanana), and the two Julies (Stephanie Clarke, Kat McCormack) are glowingly pregnant but stagnant in the boudoir. Perennial lake activities—hiking, swimming, taking too much Molly—bring them together, while the weight of shared baggage threatens to sink their proverbial canoe. Writer-director Tara Thorne infuses Lakeview with the bite of her audacious revenge thriller Compulsus (I+N35, 2022), adding rat-a-tat-tat humour as she ping-pongs deftly between one crisis to another, charting the zippy chemistry and pliancy of true friendship.

Documentary

LGBTQ+ activist Staceyann Chin easily identifies as a mother, poet, writer, dissenter, and truth speaker—it is the label of “daughter” that causes her the most pause. Forced to become a sleuth, she attempts to pierce the veil of secrecy around her mother’s life and come to terms with her absence. After decades pursuing “the career of lesbianism,” Chin is now hot on the trail of her mother Hazel and a more anchored sense of self. Chin travels from Brooklyn to Montreal, where Hazel lived after abandoning Chin in search of a better life, then onwards to far-flung destinations: Germany, Jamaica. Chin talks to neighbours and loved ones, piecing together the puzzle as she goes. With every clue, she is forced to confront past traumas and test the limits of forgiveness, all while caring for her daughter, with whom she famously stages “Living Room Protests” on YouTube. Tapping into the ferocity of Chin’s slam poetry and using digital collage to convey Hazel’s floral allure, director Laurie Tonwshend paints a dual portrait of motherhood. She also practices Chin’s hard-won brand of radical kindness and compassion, finding the grace in failure.

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.