TTT

Short

I learn to speak French and in this way to draw my surroundings. In Paris in an artist's studio, I meet Linda Demorrir, a living model. Like me, she is transgender and an immigrant. When she speaks, moves, sees the world, I am caught up. By doing her sketch, it's me too that I learn to draw in this new country.

Short

Skin is a poetic exploration of identity and self-discovery, using visual symbolism to depict a woman's transformation into a man. With the help of her inner manifestation, the iceman, she sheds her old skin and embraces her true identity.

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Alex is in the throes of his transition when his best friend abandons a joint venture to assert their burgeoning identities he’s forced to confront his anxieties before entering the unknown alone.

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A trans drag queen crosses paths with an old flame on the streets of Los Angeles. Over the course of a weekend, the pair act on their unexplored desire for each other.

Short

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

Short

While struggling with dysphoria, a trans boxer, Remy, wrestles with the decision to transition at the potential cost of their marriage. When another trans boxer, Joey, enters the gym, the two find solace in training together while navigating their own challenging journeys.

Short

From the tormented little mermaid to the fulfilled woman she is today, Gigi tells us about her gender transition with humor and sensitivity.

Short

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.

FeatureVIRTUAL

This homage to Bollywood spectacle and intergenerational bonds is a time-hopping, candy-coloured crowd pleaser that induces huge smiles and big laughs while also tackling the resonant themes of enforced gender roles, passive racism, and the seismic shifts of growing up. Azra (a stunning Amrit Kaur) lives in cohabitating sexual bliss with her girlfriend in Toronto in the VHS-popping 90s when she receives news of her father’s death. One voltaic match cut later and she’s on a plane for the funeral in Pakistan with her brother (Ali A. Kazmi), where her mother (Ms. Marvel’s Nimra Bucha) nitpicks and her culture shuts her out of the mourning process. Then another and we’re in 1969 Karachi, swept up in the whirlwind romance of Azra’s rule-breaking mother (also played by Amrit Kaur, underscoring mother-daughter parallels) and dashing father (Hamza Haq) before their tough transition to 1989 Nova Scotia. Each temporal hop peeling back another layer of how Azra’s family dynamic came to be. The Queen of My Dreams is itself a moviegoer’s dream, chock-full of eye-popping visuals, high production value, and fantastic fashion. Revealing how salvation can come in unlikely ways from unlikely sources.

DocumentaryVIRTUAL

The rediscovery of a neon sign transports us back to when disco was queen and Edmonton’s Flashback club became “the Studio 54 of the Prairies.” Through years of violent raids and the encroachment of AIDS like wildfire, the club and its members nourished an open-hearted, fashion-forward oasis. Created and narrated by Montreal teacher and writer Matthew Hays, Flashback is an insider’s take on how a nightlife “melting pot” defied expectations of “the most Bible Belt-y place in Canada” and rose to international fame. Told he wasn’t gay enough to enter Club 70, Albertan John Reid endeavoured to create his own welcoming space: equal parts state-of-the-art discotheque, record store, and community hub. There, queer youth blossomed and Gretzky and Sarah McLachlan partied. Twirl to the soaring vocals of D’orjay and hip bump with those who were there through clouds of perfume and poppers, while getting a fascinating primer on how the club’s designers calibrated disco music for a custom-built dancefloor. Even when Flashback eventually lost its blissed-out exuberance during the AIDS epidemic, it gave much in return: a relief in a maelstrom and a social conscience for the fights to come.

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

FeatureVIRTUAL

Inspired by true events, in 1970 an unorthodox mother sends her offbeat son from New Brunswick on a wintry cross-country mission past Quebec to retrieve his brother from Toronto after a public sex violation. Antics ensue in the Two-Solitudes atmosphere, bursting with revealing humour about brotherly love and French-English relations. In bravura performances, Alan Cumming plays motormouth Perley—dressed in an ushanka and ascot, taxidermied dog tucked under his arm—and Charlie Creed-Miles is Weldon—a gruff stoic in crooked glasses. These oddball siblings travel through frozen nights and across the language divide as they bicker, break down, and ultimately bond in their journey through central and eastern Canada. Weldon forced to confront the reality of Perley’s homosexuality (and his abject fear of being required to speak French) as he processes a horrific event from their past. After a lifetime of shutting down, a new set of dire circumstances has them opening their ears to hear one another’s stories. Award-winning filmmaker Michael Clowater, a master of wringing humour from pain, never loses sight of Perley and Weldon’s essential humanity among the pratfalls and bigotries, embedding beautiful truths in the film’s engrossing frictions.

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.

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A possessive doctor prepares an ostensibly romantic bath for his narcissistic boyfriend, but after an accusation of infidelity, things take a deeply disturbing turn.

Short

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

FeatureVIRTUAL

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.

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.