Victorian Queens

Jordy's 65 Reasons to Live

A heartfelt and uplifting portrayal about one young remarkable drag queen from Leith who, despite suffering from cystic fibrosis, lives life to the max. At 24 years of age, Jordan McKinley knows he is on borrowed time. This Leith-born-and-bred drama teacher, DJ and top Edinburgh drag artist faces his medical condition head-on and lives his life at 100 miles an hour.

The Spiral Generation

A significant group of trans and queer artists gather to mourn the loss of their friend – Indigo, AKA Spiral – to suicide.

Beyond the Straight and Narrow

How did the rise of LGBTQ visibility, political progress, and digital technologies in the 2000s come together to offer the abundance of complex queer and transgender representations we see today? Media scholar Katherine Sender shows how LGBTQ visibility and political progress have combined with new digital media technologies and television platforms to produce an increasingly complex range of queer and transgender representations.

Trailblazers

Alia and Muz are Pakistani-Welsh queer chosen siblings who overcome rejection and forge a path towards inclusivity. While being part of the local house ballroom scene, they soon meet Aiman, who compels them to form a trio as an Asian artist's collective in Wales. 'Trailblazers' follow their journey in reclaiming their identities, preserving their cultural heritage, and empowering Asian queer artists who refuse to let their families' rejection define them.

Boys Will Be Girls

For these lipstick Cinderella's, balls are a real drag. With their duct tape D-Cups, these torch songbirds crown the drag queen within. From dudes to divas, these boys will be girls.

The Beauty President

In 1992, at the height of the AIDS pandemic, activist Terence Alan Smith made a historic bid for president of the United States as his drag queen persona Joan Jett Blakk. Today, Smith reflects back on his seminal civil rights campaign and its place in American history.

Saturday Night Butch

Originating in 1950s America, the term "Saturday Night Butch" described lesbians who dressed stereotypically feminine during the week—for work and daily life—and expressed their Butch identity only on weekends, in lesbian bars. Claudia Vogt’s film explores the modern relevance of this term through the stories of five queer women, highlighting the positive impact these spaces have had on their lives.

Arde Lima

Anthony Vergara, Renato Renzo, Gerson del Carpio, and Ernesto Pimentel are four gay men who defy a Lima society that is still very macho, conservative, and religious, wearing high heels, shiny dresses, and well-styled wigs.

The Alexander Ball

The Alexander Ball is an observational documentary extravaganza celebrating Samoan-Māori-Australian trans woman of colour, Ella Ganza, and the Meanjin (Brisbane) ballroom scene, as she and her ballroom family prepare for one of the biggest pride events of the year: The Alexander Ball.

b.longing

A dialogue and home video about belonging, from young people living in modern colonial society.

Hape Kerkeling – Total Normal

To mark the 60th birthday of the multi-talented comedian, singer and author Hape Kerkeling, the two documentary filmmakers André Schäfer and Eric Friedler have created a quiet, thoughtful and entertaining portrait of this often anarchic humorist. The film tells of his rapid rise as a teenager, his time and the blows of fate during the AIDS epidemic, the controversial forced outing, his confident exit from the show business and his new beginning. The film is a sensitive insight into the family history and a fast-paced journey through the career stages of a formative figure in German TV entertainment.

Hong Kong Heels - 港出我天后

Pan lives two lives. During the day he is the son of a traditional Hong Kong family. But at night he transforms into the unapologetic drag queen Pansze Diva entertaining the underground of the city. Ultimately looking for acceptance by their parents, what does a death in the family change?

Wërapara

Amidst the Colombian Andes, a group of trans women from the Embera Chami community make their way into the international fashion scene, empowered through artistic collaboration and creation while preserving their spiritual heritage and ancestral connection to their territory.

La boîte à frissons

For decades, Le Tango, a legendary LGBTQ+ dance hall in Paris’s Marais district, welcomed everyone who loved to dance, regardless of gender or orientation. When the building was put up for sale in 2020, its music stopped, threatening to erase a vital community refuge. This documentary traces both the vibrant history and the fierce fight to save this iconic space. Through personal stories from regulars and activists—Grégoire, Giovanna, Christian, Livia, and others—the film revisits nights of drag balls, Dalida tributes, and joyous Madisons, revealing how Le Tango became a symbol of freedom and belonging. As filmmaker Antoine Vergez follows Hervé and the Tango 3.0 collective’s three-year struggle to reopen the club, the film becomes both a love letter to queer nightlife and a chronicle of collective resistance to cultural disappearance.

Jisoe

A year in the life of troubled Australian graffiti artist Justin Hughes.

Ce feu qu'on tait - Fragments d'une jeunesse queer

Guynel and Diovany are two young queer men with radically different personalities but from the same island, Martinique. After three years away, Guynel returns to his homeland to reconnect with his roots, his loved ones, and to come out to his father. Diovany, meanwhile, is about to finish his studies and is preparing to compete in one of Martinique’s first “Balls.” It marks the beginning of a dream that will likely one day lead him to the Parisian drag scene. Two intertwined destinies that, through their search for identity, tell the story of queer youth in Martinique and their passage into adulthood.

Também se chamavam Sonhos

A documentary from Recife that follows the story of five friends, transforming memories into an audiovisual time capsule. Created as a graduation project in Design by Carlos Pontes (UFPE), the film unfolds as a collective letter seeking to eternalize not only memories, but also the intensity and restlessness of those who find in art, friendship, and acceptance a way of existing.

Invertidos: la ley contra el deseo

History of the stigmatization and marginalization to which the queer community was subjected in Spain during the Franco dictatorship.

Gossip - Wie eine Band die Nuller Jahre umkrempelte

The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson

Describing herself as a 'street queen,' Johnson was a legendary fixture in New York City’s gay ghetto and a tireless voice for LGBT pride since the days of Stonewall, who along with fellow trans icon Sylvia Rivera, founded Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), a trans activist group based in the heart of NYC’s Greenwich Village. Her death in 1992 was declared a suicide by the NYPD, but friends never accepted that version of events. Structured as a whodunit, with activist Victoria Cruz cast as detective and audience surrogate, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson celebrates the lasting political legacy of Johnson, while seeking to finally solve the mystery of her unexplained death.