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Films you won't want to miss this weekend at Queerscreen

Don’t miss out on some amazing LGBTQ+ films screening in Sydney this weekend as part of the 12th Queerscreen Film Fest.

Taking over Event Cinemas George Street, the Queerscreen Film Fest is bursting with queer film excellence.

Queerscreen opened Wednesday night with a sold-out screening of Plainclothes starring Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey.

Tonight’s screening of From All Sides is sold out, with more sessions filling up fast.

So, we’ve compiled a list of some of the queer cinematic highlights you can still book tickets for this weekend.

Source: Queerscreen

Sauna

Saturday, catch the steamy Danish romantic drama Sauna, based on the novel by Mads Ananda Lodahl.

This film offers an intimate insight into a relationship between two men from very different worlds.

Sauna marks the first Danish feature with a trans actor and character in a lead role.

The film explores how, in queer life, everything is coloured by political and social questions – even love.

New to Copenhagen, Johan’s life revolves around Apollo, the hypermasculine gay sauna where he works and plays.

Though he enjoys some nightlife debauchery, Johan wants something more, and finds it with William.

Taking time off uni to focus on his transition, William surrounds himself with a close-knit network of queer and trans friends while he saves up for top surgery.

Introducing each other to their respective communities, they clash against discrimination and a lack of understanding.

Can their relationship survive rigid ideas about gender and love?

Get your tickets to Sauna here.

Niñxs

A special Wear It Purple screening of Niñxs is free for anyone 25 and under on Saturday.

Niñxs is a coming-of-age documentary that celebrates freedom of expression through the eyes of a trans child.

Tender, joyful and quietly revolutionary,

When Kani Lapuerta, a trans man, first met Karla in a small town outside Mexico City, she was seven years old.

Wearing dresses and climbing trees, he was inspired by how supportive her parents were.

Tired of being asked to be in documentaries about the trans experience by cis filmmakers, Lapuerta decided to take the narrative into his own hands.

And after eight years of friendship with Karla and her family, Niñxs is the result.

What began as a portrait of a curious child evolved into a creative collaboration.

Centring Karla’s imagination, humour and point of view, it captures her unique perspective on her journey of self-discovery.

Now 15, Karla prepares to start high school, and she decides to legally change her name and gender.

Niñxs is a celebratory film that shows the power of being raised with love and understanding, without shying away from the realities of navigating society’s prejudices.

Get your ticket to Niñxs here.

Lucky, Apartment

After nearly nine years as a couple, Seonwoo and Heeseo buy a small apartment together. 

When a leg injury leaves Seonwoo unable to work, their relationship strains as Heeseo shoulders the financial burden alone. 

Screening Sunday, Lucky, Apartment is the narrative debut from award-winning documentary filmmaker Kangyu Ga-ram.

Breaking new ground in Korean queer cinema, the film explores themes of isolation and the pressure to conform.

Heeseo continues to hide their relationship from her family.

Seonwoo is stuck at home, becoming fixated on trying to find the source of a foul odour emanating from downstairs.

When she discovers the old woman who lived in the apartment below has died, her quest to rid their apartment of the smell becomes something much more.

Lucky, Apartment draws on real experiences of queer life in South Korea.

Using the apartment complex as a microcosm of wider society.

Exploring the claustrophobia of navigating homophobia in a heteronormative world.

Get your tickets to Lucky, Apartment here.

Mixed Shorts

Who doesn’t like a shorts package as part of a film festival?

All the films of Queerscreens Mixed Shorts share the same ethos.

At a time when people aim to divide the LGBTIQ+ community, we do as we always have and come together to support each other.

Anyway, I Piss Sitting Down shares the story of three friends who embark on a journey back to their Quebec hometown.

All while Sasha, recovering from his gender-affirming surgery, dreams of swimming shirtless at his childhood beach for the first time.

A Bird Hit My Window and Now I’m a Lesbian is a US animation getting its Australian premiere.

Fionn shows up on Gray’s doorstep holding the pigeon that had just crashed into her window.

An impromptu bird funeral changes the way Gray views herself and her identity.

Dandelion shares the story of a foster teen and a social worker.

A rebellious foster teen is thrown out of another group home for being disruptive, so a social worker has one night to find her a new home.

Celeste Lecesne discusses how sharing his truth in an off-Broadway solo show became an Oscar-winning short film in One Story at a Time: Celeste Lecesne.

The show also inspired the LGBTIQ+ youth suicide prevention hotline, The Trevor Project.

Longtime friends Carry and Daniel have never acknowledged their underlying feelings for each other in Where We Stay.

Now that Carry is sick, will they dare to follow their hearts even though time is running out?

In Zari, young American Neelu is preparing for her sister’s wedding in India.

Neelu forges an unexpected connection with Zeyb, a quiet sari store clerk who moonlights as an internet drag queen.

Get your tickets to Mixed Shorts here.

10th anniversary screening of Holding the Man (next week)

I don’t know how, but there are still tickets left for next week’s screening of Holding the Man.

The screening marks the 40th anniversary of ACON and the 30th anniversary of the original memoir of this much-loved Australian queer classic.

Based on Timothy Conigrave’s cult-classic memoir, Holding the Man is a warm, funny and achingly sad true-life story.

A pair of star-crossed lovers, Tim and John, meet when Tim is in a high-school production of Romeo and Juliet.

The encounter ignites a romance that endures for 15 years to laugh in the face of everything life throws at it.

The screening will be preceded by a Q&A with producer Kylie du Fresne, writer and playwright Tommy Murphy and ACON Director Matthew Vaughan.

On Sunday, you can watch six Australian filmmaking teams pitch their LGBTIQ+ short film projects.

The winner will receive $10,000 in production funding from Queer Screen to bring their short film to life.

Entry to Pitch Off is free, but bookings are strongly encouraged.

Sessions are filling up, so what are you waiting for?

Queerscreen Film Fest runs until August 31st in Sydney at Event Cinemas, George Street.

Check out the full program here.

Image: Supplied

Gabe Silverman and Fiona Dawson discuss the origins and impact of their powerful documentary, and its connection to the controversial Trump administration ban on trans people serving in the military.

“Here we were with an original documentary about two trans service members in a relationship, in the military who were coming out publicly for the first time, and it just kind of hit like gangbusters.”

Gabe Silverman is as pleased as anyone that his and co-director Fiona Dawson’s 13-minute film chronicling the United States’ ban on transgender personnel serving in the military has become a fully-fledged documentary garnering awards across the world.

When former Washington Post journalist Silverman, and his wife, Transmilitary writer Jamie Coughlin, formerly of USA Today, quit their jobs to start a production company, one of the first calls they received was from The New York Times. “They had licensed some material from an activist, Fiona Dawson; she was an advocate and they wanted to pair her with a journalist to produce what at the time was going to be a 3 to 4 minute film.”

“This short film ended up on the front page of The New York Times and was really making waves; we knew the story was unfolding and needed to be told,” said Dawson, who appreciated working with Silverman on the project. “The combination of our backgrounds really meant that we had different skill sets and experiences to bring together to make something potentially different.

“Filmmakers often have different primary motivations for making something. I’m an advocate who wants to use the power of film and television to change hearts and minds. I really wanted to use this as an advocacy piece to reach people that wouldn’t typically look at a trans story.”

“We have this opportunity to tell a really complicated and interesting story that intersects with many different issues, so we followed it and we thought there’d be one of two endings – that the ban would be lifted and we would have a kind of celebratory ending or the ban would not be lifted,” said Silverman. “But we never thought there’d be this third ending where we’d lift the ban, everything is hunky-dory, and more than a year later a new Commander-in-Chief decides to reinstate the ban.”

“Just a couple of months ago the Supreme Court did say this temporary ban could go into place,” said Dawson of the new ban, a final judicial decision on which is pending subject to several lawsuits. “Our prediction is that it will end up at the Supreme Court by next year.

“It creates a cultural climate that says that top leadership doesn’t actually really want trans members there, so any leaders beneath them that have an inclination to discriminate in some way kind of now have licence to do so. Of course it now means if you’re trans you can’t join the military.”

“What happened was that Trump tweets about it,” added Silverman. “The Supreme Court then decided that they would lift all the injunctions until it plays out in court. So now the ban is back in place. There was over two years between the time when the ban was lifted until April 12 of this year.

“During that time trans service members continued to serve openly and with the ban lifted there were zero incidents reported, no negative effect, and now it goes back into effect, it’s absurd. It’s the same thing you had under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell where you can be gay or you can be a lesbian but never tell anyone about it, never act on it, never live as your true self.”

Transmilitary premiered in Australia at the Veterans Film Festival in Canberra last November before screening at Queerscreen and LGBT-centric film festivals across Victoria. This author was a judge at the Veterans Film Festival where Transmilitary was awarded the Red Poppy Award for Best Film. The win was in no small part due to the filmmakers’ ability to adapt to the rapidly changing political environment to tell a compelling story and the intimate, moving access they were granted by those trans service members who are not able to fully express their identity in the country they defend.

“They were willing to do that because they knew if they didn’t do that then the next line of trans service members and trans kids wouldn’t have the type of representation that they didn’t have growing up,” said Silverman. “We wanted to make a very personal documentary which yes is about policy, but also, what is the weight of the policy on individual service members and their families? They knew they were risking their careers.”

Dawson and Silverman developed strong, ongoing friendships and relationships of trust with the subjects of their documentary. This included Logan Ireland, a transgender airman who, serving as male, has been deployed in the US military, and Logan’s partner, Laila Villanueva. Laila was assigned male at birth and she has served in the military as an Army Corporal.

Silverman cites one moving moment in particular. “Logan got a message from a mother in New Zealand who had an 8-year-old trans son who did not know how to deal with it. She’s a single mother, there’s not a lot of trans people in her community. She finally saw not only what her trans son could look like, but Logan’s mum, who is nothing but supportive, nothing but loving, and what that model does to a trans kid. When you unconditionally love them just like any other child, they thrive like everybody else. It became this amazing pen-pal relationship between Logan and this trans kid in New Zealand. They’d send each other gifts and letters, they still talk. It’s really cute.”

“At the end of the third screening we hosted at South By Southwest there was this one person whose gender presented very masculine,” said Dawson, who together with Silverman won the Best Feature Documentary Audience Award at the Texas festival. “When they came up, they said to me in a very whispered voice, ‘Just two weeks ago I retired from the Army and I actually identify as a trans woman. I haven’t started my transition yet, but I need you to know that this film is really going to help me explain who I am to my family,’ and I just got chills.

“Hopefully this film will stop a new ban, but if it doesn’t, but helps people come out as trans to their friends and families, I will be very satisfied that we completed part of the job.”

‘Transmilitary’ is streaming now at SBS On Demand

on SBS & Festevez