The hottest tickets at Queer Screen’s 30th Mardi Gras Film Festival

There’s a huge range of marvellous movies and documentary films to choose from.

Opening night film, ‘Of an Age’. Source: Roadshow Films

Queer Screen’s 30th Mardi Gras Film Festival unspools from 15 February to 2 March, during Sydney WorldPride, making for an even more exciting LGBTIQA+ cinema showcase than usual.

From opening night gem Of an Age, a lovelorn gay romance by Australian-Macedonian director Goran Stolevski, to Danish lesbian coming-of-ager The Venus Effect marking closing night, there’s so much to see. They include Sydney-set highlights Lonesome and The Longest Weekend, a doco about trailblazing TV show Number 96, outdoor sessions of classics Beautiful Thing and Pride, and our Cate Blanchett in Oscar-nominated Tár. Plus you can celebrate the life of late, great Queer Screen co-founder Stephen Cummins with a retrospective gala of his work.

Here’s our guide to more MGFF highlights.

Joyland

‘Joyland’. Source: Madman Films

Talk about making an entrance. Saim Sadiq’s luminous Lahore-set family drama was the first Pakistani offering to debut at the Cannes Film Festival and wound up taking home both the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize and the Queer Palm. It details the awakening of married man Haider (Ali Junejo) who finds himself thrust unexpectedly into the world of exotic dancing and falling for glittering star Biba (Alina Khan), a trans woman. Delicately done, it’s just as much about Haider’s extended family, including the sacrifices of his wife Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq).

Click here for Joyland session times and tickets.

The Giants

‘The Giants’. Source: Madman Films

For many Australians, former Greens leader Bob Brown is a hero for both his activism-led defence of our natural habitats and for the beacon he offered so many of us as an out and proud politician, back when it wasn’t quite as familiar a scenario as it is now (still not enough). Directors Rachael Antony and Laurence Billiet pay tribute to a life well-lived in this look at the man and his legacy, which also explores the lifecycle of the towering native trees he’s helped to save.

Click here for The Giants session times and tickets.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’. Source: Madman Films

While we’re on the subject of empowering docos about dead-set legends, this intimate portrait of bisexual American artist Nan Goldin, by CitizenFour and Risk director Laura Poitras, is a perfect example. Launching a ferocious campaign to take down the monstrous American family that got the country hooked on wildly addictive prescription drug OxyContin, Goldin deploys art as disruptive activism in much the same way as ATC UP during the HIV/AIDS crisis. She has skin in the game – the drug nearly claimed her life. Powerful stuff.

Click here for All the Beauty and the Bloodshed session times and tickets.

El Houb – The Love

‘El Houb – The Love’. Source: True Colours

Anyone who has struggled to embrace their queer identity will know that coming out of the closet doesn’t necessarily happen all at once, or the way we want it to. Dutch director Shariff Nasr examines this struggle in a visually and emotionally exhilarating way in this deserving award-winner. He casts the brilliant Fahd Larhzaoui as a Dutch-Moroccan man whose dad walks in on him in bed with his Ghanian boyfriend (Emmanuel Boafo). He winds up barricading himself into the closet under the stairs at his parents’ home until the family unconditionally accept him.

Click here for El Houb – The Love session times and tickets.

The Five Devils

‘The Five Devils’. Source: Wild Bunch International

J’adore Adèle Exarchopoulos in Blue is the Warmest Colour? You may also dig her in Ava director Léa Mysius’ witchy sophomore feature, which premiered at Cannes last year. She plays Joanne, a swimming instructor married to fireman Jimmy (Moustapha Mbengue). She harbours a dark secret in their fog-enshrouded village in the shadow of the Alps (so far, so horror) that’s gradually uncovered by her daughter Vicky (Sally Dramé), who has a super-heightened sense of smell and time-bending abilities, because why not? They come into play when Joanne’s estranged sister Julia (Swala Emati) reappears, threatening to upend everything. Weirdly wonderful.

Click here for The Five Devils session times and tickets.

 

#LookAtMe

‘#LookAtMe’. Source: Pōtocol

The power of social media is both a blessing and a curse for queer people, allowing a platform to connect, share stories and organise, but also a way for trolls to amplify their hatred. Singaporean filmmaker Ken Kwek’s drama gets to the heart of this dilemma with a story set in his home country about twin brothers (one straight, one gay, both played by Yao) who usually post YouTube pranks. But when they expose the homophobic diatribe of a megachurch televangelist (Adrian Pang), it lands one of them in jail and opens a world of pain for their family.

Click here for #LookAtMe session times and tickets.

My Emptiness and I

‘My Emptiness and I’. Source: Film Republic

If you caught Spanish filmmaker Adrián Silvestre’s magnificent doco Sediments, about a road trip taken by six trans women with LOTS to say, at last year’s MGFF, you’ll want to check out his follow-up. Several of that film’s subjects show up in cameo roles in a story starring Parisian actor Raphaëlle Pérez as a lonely soul looking for love in Barcelona. Her sense of identity is shaken when a somewhat blunt doctor diagnoses her with gender dysphoria. Her ensuing transition is traced delicately in a nuanced film focusing on personal triumphs more than the transphobia she faces.

Click here for My Emptiness and I session times and tickets.

Cop Secret

‘Cop Secret’. Source: Alief

Need a goofy laugh? We heartily recommend this ridiculous cop thriller spoof from Icelandic football player-turned-director Hannes Þór Halldórsson. Running amok with hoary tropes, he casts Auðunn Blöndal as a closeted detective who is overcompensating waaaaay too much on the macho man front. Which automatically puts him at odds with his cardi-sporting new partner (Egill Einarsson), whom he begrudgingly teams up with to get to the bottom of a strange spate of robberies where nothing’s actually stolen. Cue steamy tension and genre-skewering jokes by the bucketload.

Click here for Cop Secret session times and tickets.

Blitzed!

‘Blitzed!’. Source: Monster Entertainment

Music lovers will be swept up in Michael Donald and Bruce Ashley’s doco about Steve Strange and Rusty Egan’s hectic creation of short-lived London club The Blitz, and its impact on the emerging New Wave movement in the late ’70s, early ’80s. Sparked by working-class club kids who whipped up astounding costumes from nothing, they were equally inspired by punk rock as they were by the queer alienness of Bowie. This archival treasure trove speaks to surviving luminaries including Marilyn, Boy George, Princess Julia, Darla-Jane Gilroy, Gary Kemp, Michele Clapton and more.

Click here for Blitzed! session times and tickets.

This Place

This Place Source: Picture Tree International

Tamil-Canadian filmmaker V.T. Nayani’s glowing feature debut, which bowed at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, presents an all-too-rare lesbian romance only featuring people of colour. Priya Guns plays Malai, a Tamil woman who’s just found out her Sri Lankan immigrant father is dying. She finds herself drawn to Kawenniióhstha (Reservation Dogs’ Devery Jacobs), a Mohawk woman wanting to track down the Iranian father who left her mother, in a heartfelt film about the way we can find ourselves through discovering one another.

Click here for This Place session times and tickets.

 

Also explore our picks of queer cinema streaming at SBS On Demand, to celebrate Sydney WorldPride:

SBS On Demand is a Major Media Partner of Queer Screen’s 30th Mardi Gras Film Festival, running 15 February to 2 March. Full program and tickets here.