The Act of Queerness: Notes on the 75th Berlinale
BERLINALE 2025: LGBTQIA+ films at the festival’s 75th edition showed a refreshing tendency toward celebrating the experience of queerness rather than solely the identity within.
Unapologetically Out in Space: ‘Lesbian Space Princess’ (2024) by Leela Varghese and Emma Hough Hobbs
BERLINALE 2025: The Australian animated feature isn’t the radical, anarchic queer middle-finger to the heteropatriarchy that it claims to be, but it is an eager, honest effort by these first-time feature directors.
What We Perform in the Shadows: ‘Night Stage’ (2025) by Marcio Reolon and Filipe Matzembacher
BERLINALE 2025: The Teddy Award-winning Brazilian filmmaking duo returns to the festival with an erotic but not-so-thrilling melodrama where the film’s lighting ultimately steals the spotlight.
‘There is a difference between longing and reality’: Jun Li and Jayden Cheung on ‘Queerpanorama’
BERLINALE 2025: The writer-director and lead actor talk connection in an estranging world, staging intimate scenes, and creating harmonious visuals on a low budget.
‘You have to be able to handle the normality that comes after a dream’: Victoria Verseau on ‘Trans Memoria’
TROMSØ 2025: In this wide-ranging conversation, the writer-director speaks on her relationship to documentary/fiction, the importance of the mystified world, and creating films about the trans experience that aren’t exclusively uplifting.
Intimacy and Isolation in Cosmopolitan Translation: ‘Queerpanorama’ (2025) by Jun Li
BERLINALE 2025: A young man traverses a series of corporeal gay encounters in Hong Kong in this self-described panoramic overview of loneliness and fleeting connection in today’s world.
‘You have to keep running to hold on to hope’: Julian Chou on ‘Blind Love’
ROTTERDAM 2025: Premiering her sophomore feature, the Taiwanese director spoke to us about the multifaceted ways in which her newest film speaks to the “contradictory nature of contemporary Taiwanese society”.
No Shame, No Gain: Queer(ed) Shorts at Sundance 2025
SUNDANCE 2025: In this report, we highlight five interesting Sundance short films of different styles that we found memorable across the festival’s LGBTQIA+ offerings this year.
Sapphic Love in a Changing Taiwan: ‘Blind Love’ (2025) by Julian Chou
ROTTERDAM 2025: Julian Chou’s sophomore feature presents a meandering look at the state of queer acceptance in Taiwan through the conceit of an unexpected love triangle.
‘The way to get there is to have an emotional approach to your intimacy scenes’: Mathias Broe on ‘Sauna’
SUNDANCE 2025: The director of this new gay love story speaks about collaborating with a Copenhagen porn collective and drawing from real-life trans experiences in the Danish healthcare system.