We Forgot to Break Up

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.

Short

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

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.

Short

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.

FeatureVIRTUAL EXCLUSIVE

DUTCH • FRENCH 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.

Feature

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?

DocumentaryVIRTUAL EXCLUSIVE

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?

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

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.