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Queer Wave 2021

Feature Films

QueerWave Festival Programme 2021. The Cyprus LGBTQ+ Film Festival.

BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN

Radu Jude

106’ | 2021 | Romania Emi finds her teaching career under threat after a personal sex tape is leaked on the Internet. Forced to meet the parents demanding her dismissal, Emi refuses to surrender to their pressure.

CARMEN & LOLA

Arantxa Echevarría

103’ | 2018 | Spain Two young women come into conflict with the conservatism and patriarchalism of Madrid’s Roma community when they fall in love.

COLORS OF TOBI

Alexa Bakony

81’ | 2021 | Hungary A documentary providing an intimate glimpse into the family life of a young person exploring their gender identity in rural Hungary.

DATING AMBER

David Freyne

92’ | 2020 | Ireland, UK, US, Belgium In 1990s Ireland, two school friends decide to start a pretend straight relationship in an effort to fit in.

IT IS NOT THE HOMOSEXUAL WHO IS PERVERSE, BUT THE SOCIETY IN WHICH HE LIVES

Rosa von Praunheim

67’ | 1971 | West Germany A sociological essay film about gay life in Berlin in a time of secrecy and oppression, following Daniel’s unsatisfying immersion into gay society.

LITTLE GIRL

Sébastien Lifshitz

90’ | 2020 | France, Denmark A trans girl grows into herself in a lovely, light-filled documentary that pitches familial strength against community resistance.

LOVE, SPELLS AND ALL THAT

Ümit Ünal

96’ | 2019 | Turkey After not having seen each other for 20 years, two women are reunited on the small Turkish island where, as teenagers, they first fell in love.

MOFFIE

Oliver Hermanus

104’ | 2019 | South Africa, UK A young man in 1981 South Africa must complete his brutal and racist two years of compulsory military service while desperately maintaining the secrecy of his homosexuality.

MÄDCHEN IN UNIFORM

Leontine Sagan

88’ | 1931 | Germany At an all-girls boarding school, Manuela develops a romantic attachment to one of her teachers. One of the earliest narrative films in the history of cinema to explicitly portray homosexuality.

OBSCURO BARROCO

Evangelia Kranioti

59’ | 2018 | France, Greece An essayistic film exploring the pulsating world and poetic words of transgender narrator Luana Muniz, an icon of Brazil’s queer subculture.

SHIVA BABY

Emma Seligman

77’ | 2020 | USA, Canada A young woman struggles to keep up different versions of herself when she runs into her sugar daddy and her ex-girlfriend at a shiva with her parents.

THE COMING BACK OUT BALL MOVIE

Sue Thomson

86’ | 2018 | Australia In the middle of Australia’s divisive marriage equality vote, Melbourne hosted a gala event to honour and celebrate its LGBTIQ elders. These are their stories.

THE STRONG ONES

Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo

98’ | 2019 | Chile Lucas travels to visit his sister in a remote city in southern Chile. There he falls in love with Antonio, a foreman on a local fishing boat.

THE WILD BOYS

Bertrand Mandico

110’ | 2017 | France Five teenagers enamoured by the arts commit a savage crime. As punishment, a Dutch captain takes them to a supernatural island with luxuriant vegetation and bewitching powers.

TOVE

Zaida Bergroth

103’ | 2020 | Finland, Sweden A biopic on the formative years of Tove Jansson, showing both her personal relationships, and the creation of the popular Moomin books.

Short Films

QueerWave Festival Programme 2021. The Cyprus LGBTQ+ Film Festival.

A Normal Girl

Aubree Bernier-Clarke

14′ | 2019 | USA Bringing the widely unknown struggles of intersex people to light through the story of intersex activist Pidgeon Pagonis.

A or B

Andreas Pavlou

5’ | 2021 | Cyprus If your whole life depended on one answer, you would probably think twice: do you pick up the intercom and define your life?

Anemone

Amrou Al-Kadhi

18′ | 2018 | UK A second-generation teen searches for a way to express their non-binary identity.

Dans La Natura (In Nature)

Marcel Barelli

5’ | 2021 | Switzerland In nature, a couple is a male and a female. Well, not always! A couple is also a female and a female. Or a male and a male. You may not know it, but homosexuality isn’t just a human story.

Downhill

Stelios Kammitsis

14′ | 2015 | Cyprus The story of a mother trying to come to terms with the admission of her son’s sexuality in an island community that is taking the first step toward the recognition of same-sex relationships.

Dustin

Naïla Guiguet

20′ | 2020 | France Dustin follows the events of DJ Dustin over the course of one wild night at a warehouse party and the morning that follows.

Escaping the Fragile Planet

Thanasis Tsimpinis

17′ | 2020 | Greece A few hours before the world ends, two men have an unexpected encounter, while a strange pink fog is spreading throughout the city.

Globus Sensation

Dimitris Chimonas

7’ | 2021 | Cyprus Globus sensation is the sensation of having a lump in the throat without anything actually being present. It’s a real biological activity that an actor could not fake when crying. But as the commitment to fantasy intensifies, reality is overshadowed by the pleasures of indulgence.

Half a Life

Tamara Shogaolu

13′ | 2017 | Egypt, Indonesia, USA, Netherlands After a traumatic encounter, a young, gay Egyptian joins the LGBT rights movement. When his safety is jeopardized, he must choose whether to stay in the country he loves or seek asylum elsewhere as a refugee.

Hot Tea

Marcel Tigchelaar

3′ | 2017 | Netherlands A cup of tea never tasted so good.

IT IS NOT THE BRAZILIANS HOMOSEXUALS WHO ARE PERVERSE BUT THE SITUATION IN WHICH THEY LIVE

Leandro Goddinho, Paulo Menezes, Eduardo Mamede

12’ | 2021 | Brazil Two queer Brazilians go skinny dipping in a lake, where they talk about love, sex, colonialism and migration, on a pandemic summer afternoon in Berlin.

International Dawn Chorus Day

John Greyson

15′ | 2021 | Canada On International Dawn Chorus Day (May 3, 2020), birds from six continents join an online video call.

Islands

Yann Gonzalez

23’ | 2017 | France In Islands, characters wander through an erotic maze of love and desire.

It’s just in my head

Marius Gabriel Stancu

17′ | 2020 | Italy Andreas and Alessandro have been friends since their childhood. Every year, they spend their summer together at their hometown by the seaside.

J’Ador

Simone Bozzelli

16′ | 2020 | Italy If Claudio truly wants to fit in, he must lose his boy scent and learn how to smell like a man.

Ladies Day

Abena Taylor-Smith

9′ | 2018 | UK A young, black lesbian spends the day in an Afro-Caribbean hair salon. It’s full of fun, sheen spray, gossip and laughter, but how will she deal with the casual homophobia?

Landline

Matt Houghton

12′ | 2018 | UK Through a series of recorded telephone conversations and reconstructive visuals, Landline uses the UK’s only helpline for gay farmers as a lens through which to view the experiences of LGBTQ people in the British farming community.

Let My Body Speak

Madonna Adib

10′ | 2020 | UK Our bodies store memories. The body does not forget. A childhood in Damascus, OCD, the revolution, falling in love with a woman. My body remembers, it keeps the trauma. And after all the losses, I had to start listening to my body.

Mani

Ashkan Mehri

16′ | 2020 | Iran A 12-year-old boy is coming to terms with his burgeoning puberty and sexuality, while navigating a series of male-dominated environments in contemporary Tehran.

Marco

Saleem Haddad

22′ | 2019 | UK When a banker invites a sex worker to his London apartment, he finds himself coming face to face with both his own past, and one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.

Nightender

Flávio Gonçalves

28’ | 2020 | Portugal A restless young man with his head in the clouds finishes another shift behind the counter of a cruising bar. He takes the longest path on his way back home.

Private Photos

Marcelo Grabowsky

20’ | 2020 | Portugal A sweet couple invite a third person over for the night, who brings a lustful energy to spice things up.

Ten Times Love

Manuel Billi, Benjamin Bodi

15’ | 2020 | France Ten fragments of ephemeral love in the life of Numa, an anti-romantic hero of our liquid time.

Thank You For Dancing

Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken

19′ | 2016 | Norway A lifelong relationship is coming to an end, as we follow two elderly men and former athletes the last winter they spend together.

The Call

Marios Psaras

10′ | 2020 | Cyprus A transgender woman receives a call from her brother letting her know that their mother had passed.

The Fans

Seva Galkin

26′ | 2020 | Russia In Moscow, two skinheads kill homosexual men while being in a sexual relationship with one another. Based on a true story, the film inquires about masculinity, identity, and a sense of belonging in contemporary Russia.

The Hunt

Sholeh Zahraei, Kamil Saldun

21′ | 2020 | Cyprus The sudden discovery of his son’s secret turns Ibrahim’s traditional world upside down. Fraught with emotional conflict he takes Ismail on a fateful trip. Inspired by the biblical story of Prophet Abraham, father of all patriarchs, and his son Ismail set in present-day Cyprus, unraveling the conservative facade of the society.

Trans Happiness Is Real

Quinton Baker

8′ | 2020 | UK A trans activist chronicles their street art activism, which combats anti-trans stickering campaign on the streets of Oxford with unwavering but not untested hope.

Victoria

Daniel Toledo Saura

8’ | 2020 | Spain This is the story of a first meeting and, at the same time, of a reunion. It’s the story of the moment when Ana sees Clara for the first time.
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