PREVIEW: An international feast of queer films

Upcoming international film festivals promise a menu of queer movies that looks interesting and diverse.

The UK’s largest independent film festival – Raindance – celebrates 30 years this week with a strong queer strand to its programme. Erin’s Guide to Kissing Girls (Canada) is a Heartstopper-style feel-good film that follows all the drama and emotions ahead of a big school dance.

Wake Up, Leonard (USA) is a movie where LGBTQ+ mental health and wellbeing is under the spotlight as we follow the messy life choices of a between-jobs actor. Paloma (Brazil/Portugal) features a transgender woman confronting life challenges when the local priest refuses her request for a traditional church wedding.

Iguana Like The Sun (Mexico) is based on a play and set in a small Mexican town during a solar eclipse. It’s the colourful story of a family with broken dreams.

There are further films in the festival with LGBTQ+ characters, including Broadway. At the same time the Fragments Festival at Raindance venue Genesis Cinema features films with queer stories and characters including Pure Grit – a story of a Lesbian bareback horse racer, and Mama Bears – the tale of women with a profound love for LGBTQ+ children, which has turned them into fierce advocates for the queer community.

Framing Agnes features an all-star cast of transgender artists and performers, including Jen Richards, Zackary Drucker and Angelica Ross, as well as archive footage of Laverne Cox. It tells stories from the UCLA Gender Clinic in 1950s California.

There’s also an evening of film-themed Drag King life drawing.

Raindance runs October 26 to November 5 at a group of London cinemas and will also be streamed UK-wide by Bohemia Euphoria. More info HERE

The London Korean Film Festival runs from November 3-17. LGBTQ+ films include I Am More – where promising ballerina More has given up her dream and has been a drag queen artist for 20 years, when she’s invited to perform in New York for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.

Coming To You: Hangyeol has experienced gender dysphoria from an early age. They share with their firefighter mother, but are disappointed by her response. When Yejun comes out as gay, his flight attendant mother bursts into tears. These two mothers face the issues of being a parent to a queer child, dealing with it by joining the Queer Children’s Parents Club.

Dear Chaemin looks at the Covid-19 travel restrictions, contact tracing, bio politics and crowd control in the context of the stigmatisation and violence against queer communities in Seoul and Asian communities in Europe.

Transit features Minho, who has finally had gender-affirming surgery and is back to her profession of gaffer in a film crew. There’s a mixed reception from the rest of the crew, but she bonds with a child actresss who accepts Minho for who she truly is.

More info HERE