Horny, Frustrated, Joyous: Best of Queer Shorts at Anima 2025
ANIMA 2025: We take a look at three highlights from this Brussels festival for animated films, which have all been critically acclaimed to date—for good reason.
coming-of-age
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.
Navigating Girlhood in the Chaos – ‘1 Girl Infinite’ (2025) by Lilly Hu
ROTTERDAM 2025: In a bustling southern Chinese city, two codependent teen girls navigate the dueling loneliness and desire of these all-engulfing fateful years as one falls for the other.
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.
Emancipatory Road-Tripping – ‘Where the Wind Comes From’ (2025, ‘Tunis–Djerba’) by Amel Guellaty
SUNDANCE/ROTTERDAM 2025: Two young Tunisians set off on a cross-country journey with the end goal of escaping their systemic social conditions in this genuinely sincere, vibrant, and hopeful debut from Tunisian writer-director Amel Guellaty.
Charm in the Wake of Colonialism – ‘We Were Dangerous’ (2023) by Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu
TROMSØ 2025: In 1950s New Zealand, three teen girls boldly take on the dark and violent surviving institutions of British colonialism —and the result is surprisingly cutesy, if not a little too much so.
Brusque Brushstrokes – ‘My Old Ass’ (2024) by Megan Park
A flipped heteronormative script is not enough to make up for the emotional nuance lacking in this story of a young lesbian-identifying teen who unexpectedly falls for a young man.
Deep Cuts in the Catskills – ‘Good One’ (2024) by India Donaldson
Lush forests reveal unfortunate life truths to a teen girl on a backpacking trip with her father and his friend.