The Space You Need

Short

A 32-year-old gay artist flees repressive laws and war in Russia for Berlin, leaving his boyfriend behind. They try to sustain their relationship across the distance, but their realities quickly diverge, and life in Berlin proves less "rainbow-coloured" than expected.

Short

Jesus tries to save humanity and fulfill his purpose on earth, but runs into some unexpected, internalized hurdles.

Short

Unaware that her relationship is at a crossroads, daydreamer Katie neglects to clean the bathroom as her girlfriend asked. This plunges her into a fever dream that could either tear them apart or bind them together forever.

Short

After a long day on set, Liboria and Claudia stop at a deserted gas station and mistakenly fill their van with the wrong fuel. When someone from a past assault appears, tension rises, and Claudia takes the driver hostage, blurring the line between justice, revenge, and consent.

Short

A mother and son navigate their lust and loneliness in the queerest of ways.

Feature

Azad is a transman and aspiring film student who lives discreetly, but happily, with his girlfriend Nora in Iran’s bustling capital, Tehran. After the long and grueling process of acquiring gender affirming care, one last step stands in Azad’s way of medically transitioning–a signature of consent from his estranged father. Farnoosh Samadi presents the heart-wrenching tale of young love strained under the confines of social oppression, where sumptuary legislation enforces dress codes and women can be subjected to ‘virginity tests.’ Even darker shadows lurk beneath the stunning scenery of the remote Iranian village where Azad hails from–a place he is no longer welcome for bringing shame to his conservative and superstitious family simply by being himself. Plagued by strange premonitions, in intermittent and surreal dream sequences, Nora soon finds herself suspicious of her partner’s true whereabouts when Azad suddenly goes missing and his family insists that he has returned to Tehran without her. A slow burn that eventually heats up with riveting intensity, Between Dreams and Hope tells a remarkable story of strength, courage, and resilience that leaves a profound and lasting impression long after the credits have rolled.

Short

An artist’s attempt to recreate experimental filmmaker Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil from memory. Working from fragments, the film weaves together into an engrossing narrative. It follows patterns of thought through material such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, WG Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, and combines it with personal, intimate footage, images of the Welsh landscape, San Francisco, and of course, Chris Marker’s favourite animal.

Short

Interview with Gregory Rowe, who came from Western Canada to settle in Montreal in 1983. In addition to his comments on his experience in the English-speaking part of the gay movement, he gives a poignant account of his resilience in the face of the HIV crisis (which he has been carrying for 37 years), and his involvement in organizations that support HIV-positive people.

Feature

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.

Feature

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.

FeatureVIRTUAL EXCLUSIVE

DANISH • FRENCH 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.

Short

A literature teacher comes back to his apartment after having interrupted his class with seemingly no reason. He discovers his husband, with a bloody hammer in his hands, crying, next to a barely breathing girl, who seemed to have been hit in the head with the hammer.

Feature

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.

Short

As detective Evelyn Dubois arrests gangster Billy “the Devil” Dwayne, he gets shot in front of her. In her office with a blood stained shirt, a knock is heard on the door... Her client Liliane Wang comes to confirm the rumours circulating in town. But did she really come only for this reason?

Short

Black. Brown. Trans. Cis. Queer. Immigrant. Full Bodied. Embodied. Femme. A conversation with women from Toronto's ballroom scene exploring the intersections of identity and how they channel the presence and power of womanism on the runway.