The Divine Femme

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In Slovakia, Andrej Dúbravský prepares for his Olomouc exhibition GOOD BOY. While creating intimate work in the midst of tranquil rural surroundings, he is facing homophobic criticism from government officials, highlighting tensions between personal expression, societal backlash, and the fight for LGBTQ+ visibility.

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Anita Louise Martinez dedicated fifty years to capturing Nova Scotia's queer and trans community, including the Wild Women Don't Get the Blues lesbian camping weekends of the 1980s and 1990s.

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A filmmaker revisits a 1997 second-grade memory, exploring her queer identity, a legendary PE teacher, and a mysterious plastic fish, questioning what it means to be seen before seeing yourself.

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An exploration of Canadian photographer John Phillips’ erotic archive, chronicling the impact of AIDS on his life and work for American gay magazines in the 1990s, at the dawn of the digital revolution. An intimate portrait of an artist and an industry on the verge of transformation.

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In a rigid manor where everyone conforms, a woman receives an orange, a fruit she has never seen before. This discovery transports her into a forested world of sensual fluidity where she must choose between returning to her old life or embracing a new, transformative way of being.

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Karun, a kindly border guard, finds himself in “paradise” among Bandipora’s soaring peaks, though religious and cultural resentments simmer and scald. Jolted by Faheem’s gorgeous face revealed from behind a helmet visor, Karun is drawn into a romance with indelible repercussions in this first queer film in the Kashmiri language. Wooed by an apple and a warm ripple of attraction each time Faheem (a subtle yet potent Mir Tawseef) passes his checkpoint, Karun (Akash Unnimenon) ventures into Gurez to seek out further encounters. Gurez, a remote Kashmiri village near the border between India and Pakistan, speaks with the voice of soft lullabies and bleating sheep, of a flowing river indifferent to divisions, though that tranquility is soon replaced by distant gunfire. Determined to drop the veil of shame that partitions their lives, Faheem and Karun’s restless hearts pine for one another from a distance, the two praying to separate deities but sharing an equal desire. Wanting, so passionately, to be one. When terrorist infiltrators and a homegrown street gang make a volatile situation worse, can love bind as society breaks?

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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.

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A dancer struggles to break free from the hold of his choreographer, now drawn to another. This silent film explores power, inspiration, and replacement within the LGBTQ+ dance community through body language and music.

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In a dystopian future, two women flee exploitation and find love in a remote cabin, only to face relentless pursuit and a tragic fate.

Feature

Passionate, provocative, and powerful—it’s easy to see why Bearcave was awarded the Europa Cinema Label at the 2025 Venice Film Festival. Set in a fictional remote village in the Balkan Mountains of Greece, a love story between two lifelong friends unfolds—but will their relationship survive the call of womanhood? Argyro is a farm girl—hard-working, unpretentious, and wholesome while Anneta is … in a bit of trouble. Whisked away by her law enforcement beau (and carrying his child) Anneta’s move to the city threatens to sever her friendship with Argyro for good, but their understated glances from across the crowd at a party one night tells a different story. The whisper of sweet nothings and foggy windows in Argyro’s pickup truck soon fade to memory, leaving behind a cloud of confusion and heartbreak, that is—until Anneta’s side of the story unfolds. Set against a backdrop of sweeping landscapes, a mystical cave, and nettle bushes, Bearcave is a film that’s steeped in tradition, then abruptly subverted, and not only by a sapphic love story, but a hybrid soundscape of folkloric and contemporary music, as well as ethereal sequences of cinematographic magic.

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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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CROATIAN • ENGLISH 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.

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The protean central character of Queerpanorama has built a sex life for himself as an unreliable narrator. Curious about Hong Kong’s international tourists and struggling immigrants, this native Hongkonger briefly infiltrates their bubbles in the guise of other men he has bedded. In an open relationship with an American boyfriend—who, like his other writerly conjurings, may or may not exist—the anonymous ‘I’ (Jayden Cheung) uses his freedom to educate himself on the “complicated universe.” From vast urban spaces to remote beaches, and many a quiet restaurant and architectural marvel in between, ‘I’ bumps up against vastly different lifestyles and circumstances. Copulating and conversing with men who, like him, are searching for grounding or simply to lose themselves. For everyone seems to have reasons to be someone else—even if just for the length of their next encounter. Actor-turned-writer-director Jun Li renders his sexual odyssey in silky black and white, lending its contemporary subject matter a timeless, heightened air. With the noirish romanticism of In the Mood for Love and the beautifully framed melancholy of Lost in Translation, he depicts shifting ideas of normalcy and the burdens we bear or share.

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Frustrated sci-fi writer Julian is facing a slump in his relationship. So will his fiancé Leo's trip into orbit with the world's first ever low-cost alternative spaceline provide them with just the space they need to get back on track?