ATLS

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A celebration of House Mother Cotton and her sisters during Vancouver's ballroom scene of the 2000s. A tribute to the pioneering Canadian LGBTQ+ community and its dazzling legacy.

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Vivek navigates the chronic pain caused by the pressures of advocating for diversity, finding healing and strength through weightlifting.

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As Hadi is swept into a flood of childhood memories from Lebanon, he steps into the dreamlike whimsical world of Salma Zahore.

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On New Year's Eve, a broke and restless young man is drawn into a risky encounter with a hustler's client at a hotel. After being assaulted and scammed, with no help from the staff, he must face the consequences of his choices.

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During a late-night drive, Sean and Louis reflect on their shared journey through surrogacy.

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A long-standing friendship faces tension over gender identity, but everything shifts when one friend receives life-changing news, transforming their bond and perspectives forever.

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When a mother visits her son, a drag performer, a night of raw confessions forces them to confront the unhealed wounds of their past.

FeatureVIRTUAL

DANISH • ENGLISH ST | With In Ashes, writer-director Ludvig Christian Næsted Poulsen grippingly toys with genre. He inflects one Danish collegian’s immersion in frantic hook-up culture amidst a relationship mysteriously ended with elements of psychological horror and the tension of a spy thriller. In 2017 Copenhagen, baby-faced Christian (Rex Leonard, a nervy knockout) is glued to his camera, determined to capture every giddy moment he spends with his long-distance boyfriend Aske (Lior Cohen). Flash forward to 2022 Aarhus, “the most wonderful city in the world,” and a scruffier Christian seems less than content. He interrogates his schoolmate’s perspective and confronts strangers over assumed slights. He’s plagued by an unspoken ailment. And Aske seems nowhere to be found. With each empty tryst, each hungrily inhaled cigarette, Christian descends into a type of madness. Or is it clarity? Aske’s reappearance, arriving with the jolt of a jump scare, may hold the key to that question, as desperation congeals into starry-eyed determination. For those drawn in by the enigmatic pull of All of Us Strangers, In Ashes will have you guessing ‘is this a romance or a tragedy’ until the very last second—perhaps, even, long after.

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When a mother visits her son, a drag performer, a night of raw confessions forces them to confront the unhealed wounds of their past.

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Betty, driven by fear of rejection, lives isolated at home among her miniature figurines. When she meets a woman she can’t stop thinking about, she faces a difficult choice: remain in her safe, private world or step outside and risk vulnerability for a real connection.

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The dangers of the past come in many forms. Two estranged Mi’kmaw siblings confront old animosities in an ancient forest, both in desperate need of healing. In their quest to rid themselves of the lingering evil that haunts them, they encounter the trail of their ancestors—and of their former selves. Mise’l (Blake Alec Miranda) is working a grueling shift when the jukebox warbles to life and an ominous presence from their childhood reveals itself, still capable of inflicting its wounds. Desperate, they seek out their younger brother, Antle (Forrest Goodluck). A task that requires them to part from their supportive partner and return home after many years away. Begrudgingly, their brother agrees to the journey, worried for his daughter’s safety if he does nothing, and they set out on a time-spanning mission. Elders are consulted. Strange creatures stalk them. Kinship is tested. The two heading deeper and deeper into nature at its most nurturing, and most menacing. From Bretten Hannam, the Two-Spirit L'nu filmmaker behind 2021’s acclaimed Wildhood (Opening Film I+N34, 2021), this is a ghost story of the highest order—equal parts eerie and edifying, and utterly unforgettable.

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Celestial Queer celebrates James MacSwain, Nova Scotia's beloved and beguiling queer artist, animator and gay-rights activist who passed away this past September 2025. Born and raised in the “backwater” of Atlantic Canada, MacSwain has been making ground-breaking experimental films, animations and provocative art performances for more than half a century. A quietly outspoken feminist, naturalist, and gay rights activist, Celestial Queer introduces audiences to a charmingly obscure and prolific Canadian artist. Through a combination of playful verité and rarely seen footage from his archive, Celestial Queer accompanies MacSwain and a revolving cast of characters as he revisits everything from the sites of some of his most recognized works to the rocky tidal shores of Nova Scotia. The film also includes rarely-seen footage from the infamous 1984 rooftop ‘Phallus Performance’ during which MacSwain was almost both arrested and charged with obscenity. Jim’s effusive character, prolific work, and community organizing have inspired generations of artists to fearlessly be themselves. Celestial Queer now introduces audiences to one of Canada’s best kept secrets, an artist who is effortlessly charming, engagingly prolific, and subversive to his surrealist core.

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A stroke upends 76-year-old Vicente’s recently charmed life in the Canary Islands, forcing him to trade his queer eden for a restrictive care home in San Sebastián—and to consider how essential his sexuality is to his identity. Among the nude forms dotting the Maspalomas dunes is Vicente (Jose Ramón Soroiz), a young man giving him pleasure. After 50 closeted years, this sensual existence is to be his reward. But three months later, he finds himself in a long-term care facility with neither income nor his beloved dog, minded by his estranged daughter (Nagore Aranburu). Paired with a motormouthed roommate (Kandido Uranga) with far right sympathies. Anonymously messaging his carer Iñaki (Kepa Errasti) but rejecting him in person. Camera sweeps and choral flourishes encapsulating a world that moves while he sits still. Then, a new manager brings changes just as he’s assimilated to the pale ghost of his days, dangling the hope of a “real home.” Taking us from 2018 Pride to the 2020 pandemic, directors Aitor Arregi and José Mari Goenaga honour those affected by health crises and the inexorable fact of time’s passage, which alters us in unpredictable ways.

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Based on Fleur Pierets’ memoir of the same name, Julian tells the heart-wrenching love story between the author Fleur and Julian Demoor and Project 22—their international LGBTQ+ marriage campaign of 2017 that was brought to an abrupt halt by tragic circumstances. In 2017, it was legal for same-sex couples to get married in twenty-two countries worldwide, hence the birth of the performance art piece: Project 22. Fleur Pierets, a Belgian journalist and LGBTQ+ activist, came up with the idea to travel around the world and marry Julian—her partner in life as well as business (as co-founders of Et Alors? Magazine)—and not only once, but in every country where it was possible. The goal? To raise awareness on how few places same-sex couples could legally marry. Director Cato Kusters provides a fictionalized account spanning the campaign, from the years 2017–2019, with home-movie-esque film segments that provide an immersive peek into this courageous couple’s experience, both behind the scenes, on the road, and after the fact—moments of joy and silliness, as well as the intimacy, doubt, uncertainty of fighting for one’s rights while also fighting for one’s life.

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CROATIAN • FRENCH ST | Marko, slight but mighty, seems always in control, always a champion—but what happens when he slips his banks? As “unstable air” portends torrential rains for a small Croatian village, the return of Marko’s former neighbour is the rush that might pull him under. Marko (Lav Novosel in a natural, understated performance) has a full life: a brother with Down syndrome (Leon Grgić) who he treats with a soft attentiveness; learning discipline from his father (Filip Šovagović) in the lead up to an arm-wrestling competition; chanting about female anatomy with his buds before pestering his girlfriend Petra (Franka Mikolaci) for sex. But there’s another side to his even-keeled bravado. For, as he tells his brother in the guise of a story, “the boy and the bunny” were once “inseparable,” with a secret hiding place of their own. And now that “bunny” is back. Home from cosmopolitan Berlin for his father’s funeral, Slaven (Andrija Žunac) catches Marko off guard. Despite training constantly as if to outrun his feelings, Marko returns again and again to the river, again and again to Slaven. An imported joint is shared, affections are renewed, and temperatures—and waters—rise.

Documentary

Mixing lively testimonials from unforgettable women at the forefront of mid-century lesbian bar culture with scripted segments taking the Hollywood melodrama in provocative new directions, Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives is an eye-opening cultural history—and one of the most memorable Canadian films of the ’90s. This documentary chronicles the era of lesbian-themed pulp romance paperbacks of the 1950s, a time when titles such as “Odd Girl Out” spoke to the isolated and confused young lesbians of the era. Ten women (including one of the authors of these novels), talk about being queer in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, discovering these books, and going through their own first love affairs and painful breakups. The hardships they faced (from being shunned by their families to enduring police raids) are interspersed with archival footage and four dramatized chapters from a pulp novel, Forbidden Love. The desperate measures resorted to by the protagonists in these works of pulp fiction are shown to have been quite tame compared to the real-life experiences of these women. “It is testimony to how clever the film and filmmakers are that a documentary about history continues to seem so utterly timeless.” – Matthew Hays, POV Magazine

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A tight-knit group of revolutionary gay filmmakers in late-1950s former Yugoslavia are shackled by the state to Emir, a communist bureaucrat conditioned to see sabotage everywhere. When the group endeavours to use the Tito regime’s ideological weapons against them, an upended system or the horrors of Barren Island await. Desire—for all of us—can be a heady cocktail. In a society that turns desire inside out, with trust shaken and lover pitted against lover, it becomes a minefield. Dancing cheek to cheek and screwing with abandon turned into revolutionary acts, art a tool for undermining authority. All tactics taken up by professional and romantic partners Lovro (Dado Cosic) and Nenad (Djordje Galic) and their fellow filmmakers (Slaven Doslo, Elmir Krivalic). The four friends determined to savour glimpses of the beautiful lives possible if defense mechanisms could safely fall—a boogie-woogie record; a secluded, seaside house in Istria—as they risk their lives for the cause of freedom. In Croatia’s official submission for the 2025 Academy Awards, the sex is explicit, the stakes and brutality intense, the cinematography stunning. A gutting and rarefied concoction immortalized by writer-director Ivona Juka’s daring cinematic achievement.