Short Film

Babylebbe (Babydyke)

Director: Tone Ottilie, Denmark, 2019

© Emil Aagaard / Mille Astrup, Tone Ottilie

Frede accompanies her big sister to a queer party in the hope of winning back her ex-girlfriend. Labelled by the older girls as Babydyke, all she can do is take the plunge: Chin up and stay cool. This film describes the broad palette of interpersonal emotions with great sensitivity and dramatic intensity. In a rhythm of light and shadow, the gulf closes between own desires and the expectations of others… read more

El nombre del hijo (The Name of the Son)

Director: Martina Matzkin, Argentina, 2019

© Constanza Sandoval

Lucho knows who he is. It’s the others who seem mixed up, inspecting him closely, addressing him as a girl and pestering him with questions. The time spent with his dad during a beach holiday draws attention to the process of transition that Lucho is experiencing. Struggling with his own insecurities, Lucho’s father tries hard to keep their close bond intact, while young Lucho attempts to come to terms with the development of a body going through puberty… read more

Extractions

Director: Thirza Cuthand, Canada, 2019

© Thirza Cuthand

Extractions parallels resource extraction with the booming child apprehension industry. As the filmmaker reviews how these industries have affected her, she reflects on having her own eggs retrieved and frozen to make an Indigenous baby… read more

Genius Loci

Director: Adrien Mérigeau, France, 2019

© KAZAK PRODUCTIONS – FOLIMAGE

There is chaos everywhere: in her head and outside, in the big city. Things are taking on a life of their own. Young Reine is on the search, but she does not know what she is looking for. In delicate drawings and fluid animations, we see the world through her eyes and her perception becomes tangible… read more

HaMa’azin (Listening In)

Director: Omer Sterenberg, Israel, 2019

© Shiri Kuban

He is young and works for Israeli military intelligence. On headphones, he listens in on the conversations of Palestinians. The phone calls of one gay couple in particular begin to fascinate him more and more. Privy to the complicated relationship between the two as it unfolds, he doesn’t know whether and, if so, in what way he should follow his feelings. For here, too, the private is political, and the most intimate things of all can lead to disaster… read more

Inflorescence

Director: Nicolaas Schmidt, Germany, 2020

© Nicolaas Schmidt

Autumn again on planet Earth. Eternally united, a couple of pink rose petals endure the slings and arrows of a heavy thunderstorm. A romantic-conceptualist bedtime story of resistance and redundancy, or the awkward ambivalence of truth, dream, life and love. Let’s unite and blossom!… read more

Panteres (Panthers)

Director: Èrika Sánchez, Spain, 2020

© Gina Ferrer / Antivaho Cinematográfico

Scarred, fat, pregnant, shaved, tattooed: Joana examines the bodies of the women in the changing room. Later, she studies her own reflection in the mirror with the same intensity. Can you change your body? Your gender? Femininity? “Break free”, screams the caption on her T-shirt, under an image of Freddie Mercury – and Joana wants to break free of everything and everyone: from her girlfriend Nina‘s bad mood to the other girls at school… read more

Playback. Ensayo de una despedida

Director: Agustina Comedi, Argentina, 2019

© Agustina Comedi

Argentina in the late 1980s: Catholic, conservative and shaped by a military dictatorship. “La Delpi”, the sole survivor of a group of transgender women and drag queens, talks about how their shows in basement theatres galvanised the community and helped them in their struggle against AIDS and police violence. How they healed their wounds with lipstick, playback performances and improvised stage outfits. And how they invented happy endings for those who were to die. A farewell letter compiled from VHS memories… read more

Untitled Sequence of Gaps

Director: Vika Kirchenbauer, Germany, 2020

© Vika Kirchenbauer

Composed of vignettes in different techniques and materialities, Untitled Sequence of Gaps uses the form of an essay film to approach trauma-related memory loss via reflections on light outside the visible spectrum – on what is felt but never seen. Shifting between planetary macro scales, physical phenomena, and individual accounts of affective subject formation, the film considers violence and its workings, class and queerness not through representation but from within… read more

Who Can Predict What Will Move You

Director: Livia Huang, USA, 2019

© Jack Davis

“Nervous?” – “A little.” Two young men shooting hoops somewhere in Brooklyn. In the gradually gathering dusk, their shadows dance, entwined, to the cadence of basketball meeting pavement. Farewell is in the air. Emotions emerge to the surface. Tentatively, gently, director Livia Huang’s densely atmospheric film tells of desire and intimacy through gazes and gestures. What is memory, what is perhaps merely a dream? Or is everything dance in the end?… read more