The Queer Film Festival is a strange creature: what began in 2019 as a prolonged film weekend in Berlin, Stuttgart, and Munich has grown into a seven-day spectacle featuring 18 films in 13 cities across 19 cinemas. Munich is no longer on the lineup (there has always been a reliably stylish queer festival there, the QFFM). In the meantime, besides Berlin and Stuttgart, places like Potsdam, Halle, Saarbrücken, and Düsseldorf have joined in. It’s all wonderfully chaotic, but that’s part of the charm: in Dresden, Vienna, and Cologne, two cinemas split the program; in Nuremberg and Frankfurt, two cinemas screen the entire slate. In Gelsenkirchen’s flora cinema, newly on board this year, 14 of the 18 films are showing — in the two Leipzig cinemas, by contrast, only eleven are on the bill. Best not to overthink it and just enjoy.
Am Donnerstag geht es los
At least the opening day is uniform across the board: on Thursday, September 10, the festival kicks off in most towns with the same two films. And these are already bona fide highlights: “Fantasy,” directed by the Slovenian filmmaker Kukla, unfolds in sweeping, luminous imagery about a triad of teenage girls who stage a queer uprising in their concrete, postindustrial hometown — inspired by their club friend Fantasy, a glamorous yet defiant trans woman who knows how to push back against patriarchy. Kukla frames this as a triple coming-of-age tale wrapped in a wild urban Balkan fairytale: stylish, exuberant, and powered by four utterly captivating performers. In Vienna, Kukla will personally present her film at the opening night.
The second opening film has already drawn attention at Cannes: “Flesh & Fuel” by Pierre Le Gall follows the shy French long-haul trucker Étienne, who becomes hopelessly, joyfully entangled with his life-loving Polish trucking mate Bartosz while parked at a highway rest stop. Soon they can’t live without each other — but they often must be apart, as their strictly timed shifts fling them to precarious corners across Europe.
“Flesh & Fuel” is a film with two souls: on one side, a determined social critique and combative energy; on the other, perhaps the most beautiful gay romance of recent years — melancholic, honest, and full of hope — driven by two leads who demonstrate in every moment that their characters were made for one another despite all the obstacles. Cannes even awarded it the newly created Queer Palm Revelation for the queer discovery of the festival. For those who want the backstory: director Pierre Le Gall will join a film discussion at the Berlin Queer Film Festival’s opening at the Delphi LUX.
Gay Mussel-Farmers and Lesbian Resistance
And the other 16 films? A wild queer ride through a spectrum of life experiences, from artful to audacious, from tender to unrestrained. There’s a heart‑rending romance about gay mussel farmers in Wales (“On the Sea”), a rousing call to lesbian resistance in rural Greece (“Bearcave”), and Taiwan‑based democracy-in-film recipes from the Queer cinema icon Monika Treut. As a natural echo to last year’s festival hit “Lesbian Space Princess,” there’s also “Jim Queen,” a totally over-the-top and hilariously funny animated comedy — this time about a self-obsessed fitness influencer who is struck by a sly illness: heterosis.
Much of the program has already earned accolades at major international festivals, such as the taut thriller “On the Road” (Queer Lion winner at Venice), “Iván & Hadoum,” a tale of a lovestruck transgender man in the labor fight (“Teddy” at the Berlinale), and the endlessly warm comedy-drama “Maspalomas” (Silver Shell at San Sebastián). Many eyes will be especially drawn to Elliot Tuttle’s disturbing Cam‑Boy psycho-thriller “Blue Film,” which plays with and shatters a number of taboos — a film Sundance reportedly rejected as too risky. If you’re in the mood for an orgiastic chemsex chamber drama packed with genuine sex and philosophical digressions into Brazilian literature, you won’t want to miss “The Passion for G.H.B.”
Oh, and there’s plenty more besides. It’s best to wander through the program yourself. And for anyone who loses track: that’s part of the fun.
Detailed information on all films, all cities, and all cinemas is available at queerfilmfestival.net.
