DON’T COME OUT (NO SALGAS)

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In an Ohio town where “Jesus Is the Answer,” bodybuilder Eddie scrapes by on cam work, determined to go pro backed by the ultimate momager. But when an alluring older coach offers to mould him, Eddie is tempted by success and his nascent bisexuality to shred the ties that bind. Hype woman, tan technician, co-dependent—Eddie’s boozing, pill-popping mom (Tony nominee Tammy Blanchard) fiercely champions her son (Brock Yurich). But she’s never led him to victory. Coach Mike (Mike Edward) guarantees he can. Under his tutelage, Eddie gains confidence, technique, and access to free performance-enhancing drugs, as well as a crush, every muscle graze the prelude to an explosive awakening. Unbeknownst to Mike, Eddie is also mastering finesse through ballet lessons with the ex-girlfriend (Paloma Garcia-Lee) he’s still enamoured with. A combination that may be enough to conquer his cocky rival—the estranged son Mike desperately wants back in his life—or cause Eddie to crucify himself in the process. Featuring Glee’s Matthew Morrison as a dictatorial pastor, Test is fascinating filmmaking unafraid to wrestle with tough conversations and thorny themes, from religion to body image, steroid use to economic desperation.

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Blending horror and humour, Lethal Ethel is a mockumentary that follows the story of a Naskapi vampire who goes to murderous lengths to protect her land and culture.

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Cheryl Dunye’s groundbreaking The Watermelon Woman blends fiction and documentary to explore the erasure of Black queer women from film history. Funny, incisive, and playfully self-reflexive, this landmark of New Queer Cinema follows a filmmaker determined to uncover the story behind a forgotten face on screen. Cheryl, played by Dunye herself, is a young Black lesbian working at a video store in Philadelphia while pursuing her filmmaking ambitions. Fascinated by a Black actress credited only as “The Watermelon Woman” in a 1930s Hollywood film, Cheryl sets out to discover her name and history. Her research leads her into the intertwined worlds of race, sexuality, representation, and the hidden lives of Black women in cinema. Meanwhile, her budding relationship with Diana, played by queer cinema icon Guinevere Turner, raises questions about desire, privilege, and interracial intimacy. Moving between archival-style footage, interviews, personal video diaries, and fictional storytelling, Dunye blurs the boundaries between fact and invention. With wit and critical insight, The Watermelon Woman challenges histories that exclude queer voices and imagines new ways to reclaim them. Both a personal journey and a radical act of cinematic self-definition, the film remains a defining work of Black lesbian cinema.

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After two decades of creative repression, an artist descends into kaleidoscopic madness, turning her oppressive partner into a grotesque work of art.

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The leather bars of New York’s underground scene become the setting for a dangerous game of desire, identity, and surveillance. William Friedkin’s Cruising plunges into the city’s pre-AIDS queer nightlife, where a young undercover cop is drawn into a world he was sent to investigate. Al Pacino stars as Steve Burns, a rookie police officer assigned to go undercover in Manhattan’s leather district to track down a killer targeting gay men. Disguised as a member of the scene, Burns moves through bars, clubs, and late-night encounters as the investigation draws him deeper into a world that is both unfamiliar and increasingly difficult to observe from a distance. Released in 1980, Cruising remains one of the most controversial films about queer life in American cinema. Friedkin’s shadowy, atmospheric direction captures the charged anonymity of New York’s leather and S&M subculture, while deliberately blurring the boundaries between performance, policing, desire, and identity. Cruising will screen alongside Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders, a documentary exploring the real-life murders and notorious leather bar at the heart of the film’s story. Together, they offer two perspectives on a pivotal moment in queer New York, just before the AIDS crisis transformed the community.

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Blood, boys, and a masked killer on the loose! Paul Etheredge-Ouzts’s Hellbent, often cited as the first gay slasher film and image+nation’s 2004 Opening Night Film, unleashes a scythe-wielding murderer at West Hollywood’s Halloween Carnival. As bodies pile up, Eddie and his crush, Jake, must fight to survive in this landmark queer horror classic. With its wicked sense of humour, eye-popping production design, and ultra-gory special effects, Paul Etheredge-Ouzts’s Hellbent takes the slasher genre to a new homo height. This campy debut follows handsome boy-next-door Eddie and his three best friends into the fantastical world of West Hollywood’s annual Halloween Carnival. Distracted by his crush on the darkly mysterious Jake, Eddie—a would-be police officer—fails to notice the masked, scythe-wielding killer stalking him and his friends. As the decapitated bodies begin to pile up, Eddie and Jake must join forces in a desperate fight for survival. Packed with surprises and propelled by an explosive soundtrack, Hellbent delivers thrills, chills, and wicked laughs at breakneck speed. Blending classic slasher conventions with queer desire, camp humour, and unapologetic gore, the film carved out a distinctive place in queer horror.

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Recently divorced, Warren retreats to a quiet lake house with his young son. When a stranger named David appears asking for help, an ordinary evening becomes a tense psychological confrontation, exposing secrets, shifting power, and an unexpected connection between them.

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Writer-director Pierre Le Gall’s stealthy masterwork delivers the unexpected: a will-they-won’t-they romance set amidst late capitalist corrosion and the horrible majesty of industrial landscapes. A French, conscientious pro-trucker unusually giddy for his underpaid Polish competition after a thwarted hookup. The two embarking on a tortuous long-distance relationship with profound potential. Étienne (Alexis Manenti) works at a frenetic pace. Endless, back-aching hours with barely time for a sink bath. Contending with soaring gas prices, snarls of traffic, and dirt-cheap labour undercutting his business. His only respites a distant family and friendly dispatcher, and the occasional cruise of the woods near a truck stop—until that, too, is spoiled. Broken up by police. Étienne saved from prison time by the quick thinking of his partner in the shadows, Bartosz (Julian Swiezewski). Étienne finds Bartosz curious, his irreverence endearing. And soon he’s looking for him in every semi. Talking through fantasies with him on FaceTime. Trading eatery recommendations and compliments. Bartosz’s freewheeling spirit upending Étienne’s steady life. Flesh and Fuel puts real, desirous bodies in cramped, working-class spaces, building Étienne’s whole world out of an 18-wheeler cab. Before love begins to reveal its limits.

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14 years later, Hein returns to a wind-scraped island in the North Sea. Its eerie, Brechtian settlement of half-built houses guarded by a community prone to paranoia. Hein plunged into a dark scheme to prove his identity and the true nature of a once great love. Though he once called the tiny island home, Hein (Paul Boche) is unrecognizable even to his closest confidants, Greta (Emilia Schüle) and the forlorn Friedemann (Philip Froissant). Is Hein as devious as the villagers imply? Or is their ignorance some slippery plot hatched against him? Armed with a locket meant to unseal his relationship with Friedemann, Hein is determined to be taken for who he says he is and to allow others this same grace. His insistence leading to a trial presided over by an imperious leader (Julika Jenkins), the community’s goodwill dependent on its outcome. A trial where competing memories are judged, and Hein and Friedemann are compelled to remaster their childhood game of “Lies.” Writer-director Kai Stänicke’s tense psychodrama is an engaging allegory of how conformity shuns queerness in all its forms, and how one must insist fiercely on one’s own dignity.

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A slasher with a grudge meets his match when a group of queer friends on a weekend getaway turns his killing spree into a bloody night he never saw coming.