Mark your calendars for our Queer All Year Spring Mini Fest, featuring 3 fantastic feature films!
Featuring
“FEMME”
Tuesday, March 19, 2024 7:00 PM
(Georgia Premiere)
*Winner of 3 British Independent Film Awards including
Best Joint Lead Performance (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett + George MacKay)*
This thriller drama is bound to have audiences talking and debating afterwards. With his performances as Aphrodite Banks, Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Candyman) has a place among London's celebrated drag artists. One night after a show, he steps out to get some cigarettes and is brutally attacked by a man (George MacKay, 1917), out with a gang of his friends. Although Jules is able to recover physically, he withdraws from the outside world, traumatized. Months later, he recognizes his attacker by chance in a gay sauna. Without make-up and wrapped only in a towel, Jules is able to approach the other man incognito and find out who he is. He begins an affair with the closeted Preston, with a plan to take his revenge.
(Content Warning: This film contains scenes of graphic violence, identity-based hatred, and revenge porn themes.)
"A riveting queer revenge drama [featuring] a pair of sensational performances by Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and George MacKay.”
- Guy Lodge, VARIETY
"An outstandingly tense psychodrama of drag and sexual peril. Keeps you on the edge of your seat and the performances from Stewart-Jarrett and MacKay have delicacy, subtlety and depth. A great feature debut.”
- Peter Bradshaw, THE GUARDIAN
Directors Sam H. Freeman + Ng Choon Ping discuss new thriller "Femme” with Out on FIlm
“The Queen of My Dreams”
Wednesday, March 20, 2024 7:00 PM
(SouthEastern Premiere)
*94% Rotten Tomatoes, 8.1/10 on IMDB*
When Azra, a queer Muslim grad student, hears of her father’s sudden death, she flies back to her ancestral home in Karachi, Pakistan for the funeral, where she is received by her conservative mother, Mariam, perpetually disappointed by Azra’s choices. As a self-assured Azra wrestles with Karachi’s customs and norms, we time travel back to Mariam’s own life in the city 30 years ago, a remarkably different era in Pakistan’s political and cultural history. Through Azra and Mariam’s shared love for the inimitable Bollywood star Sharmila Tagore, director Fawzia Mirza tells a story that illuminates layers of a deep and complex bond between generations of women who live in starkly different times yet negotiate their freedoms and desires in strikingly similar ways. With outstanding performances by an all-star cast spanning continents, Mirza invites us all to celebrate unlikely bonds and the unifying power of cinema in this energetic, polychromatic, and unforgettable feature debut.
"A Stylish Medley Of Generations And Dreams"
- Valerie Complex, DEADLINE
"Mirza has created a film bursting with creative energy and distinctive aesthetic sensibilities."
- Lovia Gyarkye, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
Fawzia Mirza "Recreated" 1960s Pakistan in THE QUEEN OF MY DREAMS
- Studio 9
“The Judgment”
with lead actor Junes Zahdi
Thursday, March 21, 2024 7:00 PM
(SouthEastern Premiere)
*8.1/10 on IMDB!*
Honorable Mention, Outstanding Courage in Filmmaking
(Tallgrass Film Festival)
Mo and his boyfriend Hisham, a gay Egyptian couple, return from the U.S. to Egypt for a family emergency, but they need to pretend to be just friends in order to stay safe in Egypt’s very homophobic environment. Coming back to Egypt, however, leaves Mo especially anxious and uneasy, because someone knows his secret. They leave witchcraft at his door so that he feels threatened and ashamed. Although he pretends to be a modern American atheist, and therefore free from the superstitions of his religion and culture, Mo is terrified. Stepping into the witchcraft has revived childhood terrors and deep religious fears, and he is afraid that his shame will be exposed to Hisham, who doesn’t know that Mo still views their relationship as sinful. Little by little, the judgment day he always feared, the god he always hated, the mother who stood against him, and the sins accumulating begin to quite literally haunt him through the witchcraft, leading to the confrontation Mo always feared. Will he be strong enough to fight back and eventually be liberated?
(Content Warning: Self-harm.)
Filmmaker Marwan Mokbel talks about "The Judgment" with our Festival Director, Jim Farmer
Lead actor Junes Zahdi will be in attendance fora Q&A following the screening!