The Queen of My Dreams

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FREE ENTRANCE TO THE CINEMA // FREE SCREENING! conversation with Julien Cadieux at 18h15 FOR FREE ONLINE SCREENINGS, send a request to information@image-nation.org - a code will be sent to you. Thank you for your interest! // Acadian director Julien Cadieux trains his ingenious eye on Samuel LeBlanc, a trans musician in the band Écarlate, as Samuel travels across the Acadian region of the Maritimes, informing youth, paying homage to singer-songwriter Angèle Arsenault, and rubbing elbows with a surfeit of queer talent in this one-of-a-kind musical documentary. Gender dysphoria; rediscovering one’s indigenous culture; the inclusive, non-binary poetry of Chiac: a lot of crucial subjects are handled in exuberant, entertaining ways as Samuel confronts queer Acadians’ heartstopping lows and revels in their joyous highs, bearing witness to the region’s heartening cultural shifts. You will meet everyone from an asexual biromantic teacher to two viral drag superstars. So, come hop aboard a tractor, lobster boat, or hot air balloon. There are stories to hear and musical numbers to move you—mind and body—as the film delivers on the promise that “being unique doesn’t depend on the size of your wallet.” With the mesmerizing exactitude of Wes Anderson and a palette that gives the pastels of Barbie a run for their money, Julien Cadieux offers up a lively fantasy grounded in Acadian culture and history, then and most certainly now. Also in this programme: NOUS PARTIRONS JULIEN CADIEUX | CANADA | 2023 | 8 MIN | FRENCH Gilbert Mhanna is a queer Lebanese artist based in Toronto. His art is baladi, a dance traditionally reserved for cis women. Together, we'll explore the relationship of his Araboqueer body to this Canadian space. How does this country continue to flow through their veins?

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DUTCH • ENGLISH ST | Capturing the recklessness of youth and the excitement of newfound sexual liberties in sensuous black-and-white cinematography, Dennis Alink’s Out offers up a vivid and tender tale of being young and gay. Tom (Bas Keizer, in a star-making performance) and Ajani (an effervescent Jefferson Yaw Frempong-Manson) are closeted secondary school sweethearts who yearn for life outside of their small-minded, rural community in the Netherlands. Their solution is Amsterdam, where the queer scene is thriving and they can work at their dreams of becoming filmmakers. Quickly falling into the Dutch capital’s gay nightlife offers the pair some initial thrills: cheeky games of Never Have I Ever, limo rides across the city, eye-opening trips to the bathhouse. But the challenges quickly follow, pushing them to separately question: “Who am I, and where do I fit in?” Recalling such classic monochromatic films about wayward youth as The Last Picture Show and Gus Van Sant’s Mala Noche, Alink and his queer collaborators present a lived-in, piercing portrait that proves coming out isn’t just a pronouncement of one’s sexuality, it’s a simultaneously joyous and heartbreaking journey of self-discovery.

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SPANISH • ENGLISH ST | Argentinian filmmaker Matías is an intense perfectionist struggling to shape his autobiographical film as the past wriggles from his grip. Is Alexander—a dashing fabulist from Sweden he met in Italy as a boy—the lost love of his life? Or just a lovely, bittersweet dream? At the United World College of the Adriatic, with its diverse, exuberant student body, young Matías (Santiago Madrussan) finds a freedom he never knew in Argentina. There, he is befriended by Alexander (Oscar Morgan), whose rousing stories and bedroom eyes make the world more magical, and whose family’s vast holiday home becomes a memory palace for all that was left unsaid. In his 40s, Matías (co-writer/director Juan Pablo Di Pace) looks back at this time and, with a festival deadline looming, tries to fathom the sizzling closeness and coded interactions. A key piece of evidence lying dormant for when he least expects it. With its meta intrigues and captivating sweep, Duino is an elegiac masterwork crackling with swoon-worthy chemistry. A film that asks: how far are we willing to go for a proper conclusion, and what, in the end, remains voices in the wind?

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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.

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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.

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

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After Nino shows Iva the ropes, the two cable car drivers woo one another in increasingly ingenious ways. Day after day, the young women pass high above a quiet Georgian valley twisted with mist, cherishing each moment of connection. But when sweetness slides into sensuality, where will it send them? A man has died, his coffin carted above the village, and Iva (Mathilde Irrmann) inherits his crooked home and high-flying occupation. At first, villagers treat her with an enigmatic disdain, and she spends her days transporting customers and goods back and forth in disquiet, stealing glances at Nino (Nini Soselia). The flirtation grows as intense as their ongoing chess game, set to the rhythm of the rusted gears and their little kindnesses. Together, they will take on a surly widow (Niara Chichinadze) and lecherous boss (Zuka Papuashvili) as their courtship reaches new heights. Auteur Veit Helmer’s Gondola has the raw intensity of silent cinema and the enchanting whimsy of Amélie. Impelled by its beguiling leads and breathtaking cinematography, the film is a love letter to the countryside and those who live there, and an invitation to let your heart soar.

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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.

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In a fraught exchange between Leipzig and Strasbourg, Fanny and Lena warm to each other while the situation around them heats up. As it gets harder to parse fact from fiction, too much trust and not enough, they look to protest movements to teach them what out-of-control adults cannot. Writer-director Claire Burger’s nuanced drama is bracingly of-the-moment, capturing topical issues with a foreboding sense of longing and imminent disaster, and inspiring fiery performances from her leads, including Nina Hoss as a mother undone. After an initially cold reception from Lena (Josefa Heinsius) when she arrives in Germany, 17-year-old Fanny (Lilith Grasmug) will do anything to ingratiate herself with her prickly pen pal. Chocolate-covered shrooms, sexual experimentation, bonding over Antifa and black bloc protest movements—each attempt at connection becomes more daring than the one before, their “Franco-German friendship” mirroring the heated clashes of our time. When the school exchange is flipped, and Lena is now the fish out of water in France, giving into the attraction sizzling under her animosity will mean coming to terms with a world tearing apart at the seams and the fantasies built up to survive it.

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Infamous outlaws The Lily and The Scorpion are on the run after a bank job gone wrong, but as day turns into night, the partners’ trust in each other begins to fray.