QWOCFF 2025 Featured Screening: Can’t Stop Change

Can’t Stop Change: Queer Climate Stories from the Florida Frontlines (No se para el cambio: Historias climáticas queer desde la primera línea de Florida), dir. Vanessa Raditz, Natalia Villarán-Quiñones, and Yarrow Koning, 2024 USA, in English and Spanish with open captions in both languages throughout, 97 min. 💖
Sunday, June 15, 2025, 3:00 pm, Presidio Theater, 99 Moraga Ave., SF

(This film screened in Frameline48. Here is my review from that screening.)

Can’t Stop Change:
Queer Climate Stories

Florida is at the epicenter of the right-wing project to reshape America. Florida and Wisconsin are the testbeds for legislation put forward by ALEC, and in his laughable pursuit of the Presidential nomination, Governor Ron DeSantis went after LGBTQ+ (especially trans people and anyone standing in the way of Development, specifically including drill, baby, drill. In the face of that onslaught, some activists are holding their ground and trying to raise awareness and hopefully at some point turn the tide. Filmmakers Vanessa Raditz, Natalia Villarán-Quiñones, and Yarrow Koning interviewed activists in North Florida, Central Florida, and South Florida, plus some who felt they had to leave Florida for their own safety. They talked particularly about the intersection of climate change activism with communities marginalized by the white heteropatriarchy.

The result is a call to action and a beacon of hope, and draws clear connections between issues we often think of separately. For example, climate change has brought devastation to many parts of Florida in the form of stronger hurricanes, but the burden of that devastation has fallen disproportionately on Black and brown people, poor people, immigrants, and other people just trying to hang on. Climate is a “threat multiplier,” magnifying existing injustices. It’s a necessary film, and one that everyone should watch, definitely a MUST SEE, but unfortunately, the people who most need to see it will tune out pretty early on when they hear the radicals talk. They’re not exactly fiddling while Rome burns, but they’re playing 🙈🙉🙊 even as experts predict that as much as 60% of the land area of the city of Miami could be underwater by 2060.

• IMDb • trailer •  Official website • Instagram: @Queers4ClimateJustice • Facebook: @QueerEcoProject • other • Historias climaticas queer desde la primera linea de Florida Natalian Villaran-Quinones

Queer Women of Color

The Queer Women of Color Film Festival (QWOCFF, or QWOCMAP after the organization that puts it on) is celebrating 25 years!

The festival is three days, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, June 13 to 15, 2025, at the theater in the Presidio National Park, not to be confused with the Presidio Movie Theater, a commercial venue on Chestnut & Divisadero. The address for your GPS or rideshare is 99 Moraga Avenue.

Tickets are free (but please give what you can) at QWOCFF.org.

The programs are:

One Week to Frameline!

One week from tonight, the Frameline49 San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival will be underway! I reviewed all ten shorts programs (except for a handful of shorts that were not available for advance review), and a bunch of feature-length films, both documentary and narrative. I will be adding to those reviews for the rest of June, as I see advance screeners, theater screenings in Frameline, and streaming through the Digital Screening Room.

I also posted information about the Digital Screening Room, which will be available June 23 to June 30, 2025.

See the posts below for all the details.

Frameline49 Streaming Details

A limited selection of films from Frameline49 are available to stream online, June 23 to June 30, 2025. Most of the films can be streamed anywhere in the United States, but check the Frameline page for each title to be sure, before buying a streaming ticket. Also, note that the shorts programs shown here may not include all of the shorts; again, see the Frameline page for details.

Shorts programs: (links to Film Queen Review write-ups)

• “Alien Extravaganza”
• “First Impressions, Lasting Connections: Date Night Shorts”
• “Fun in Shorts”
• “Homegrown”
• “Saturday Morning Cartoons”
• “Scared Shortless”
• “Truth Be Told: Documentary Shorts”
• not “It’s a Family Affair”
• not “Outside Voices: Leaders in Queer Cinema Supported by Colin Higgins Foundation”
• not “Queer Quickies”

Feature-length documentaries: (links to Frameline page or Film Queen Review)

• GEN_
• In the Best Interests of the Children (preceded by Lesbian Custody)
• A Mother Apart
• Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency
• Trans Memoria

Narrative features: (links to Frameline page or Film Queen Review)

• If You Are Afraid You Put Your Heart Into Your Mouth and Smile (Wenn du Angst hast nimmst du dein Herz in den Mund und lächelst)
• Lakeview
• Niñxs
• Silent Sparks (愛作歹) (with Like What Would Sorrow Look (愁何狀))
• Skinny Love (Einskonar ást)
• ⚠️Some Nights I Feel Like Walking

As of this writing, I’ve only reviewed the shorts programs plus one documentary and one narrative feature. Those titles are links to my blog entry; other titles are links to the Frameline program page. I will update them if and when I review the films.

Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day (Lijepa večer, lijep dan)

Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day (Lijepa večer, lijep dan), dir. Ivona Juka, 2024 Croatia/‌Bosnia and Herzegovina/‌Canada/‌Cyprus/‌Poland, 137 min., in Croatian with English subtitles 👏
⚠️ content advisory: graphic homophobic violence, sexual violence
Lijepa vecer, lijep dan

Friday, June 27, 2025, 8:30 pm, Herbst Theatre
International premiere

Beautiful Evening,
Beautiful Day

Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day starts in Nazi-occupied Croatia in 1941, showing some of the students who went on to join the partisans, a highly effective resistance movement. One of the leaders of that movement was Tito, who eventually became the totalitarian dictator of the Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia. Most of the story takes place in 1957, when Tito was both President and Prime Minister of Yugoslavia. In Tito’s Yugoslavia, you were free to do and say whatever the government wanted you to do and say. Anyone in your life, your co-worker, your neighbor, even your flatmate, could be an informant for the UDBA (secret police). Any slight deviation from official dogma could result in interrogation or worse.

Lovro and Nenad were partisans who became lovers and then partners in film-making, but their talents were assigned to AGITPROP, the department for Agitation and Propaganda. They were joined by a couple of their gay friends from the partisan days of World War II. Within their small circle of family and friends, they are safe and could live and speak freely, but government censors grow increasingly intrusive, and finally UDBA tasks Emir, a party loyalist, with sabotaging the group. Ultimately, the filmmakers are resisting the full weight of the authoritarian state, fighting for the freedom to be, to speak, and to love as they pleased.

It’s a bleak story, with a palpable sense of the oppression they were living under, with all its ubiquitous tentacles in every facet of life. The moments when the men find an opportunity for a sexual connection are manic, making rabbits look calm and sedate by comparison. The walls inexorably close in on them until it all comes to a head. All but the last three minutes or so of the film is in black and white, echoing the colorlessness of life in Tito’s Yugoslavia. 

It’s exquisitely well done, but not by any means a light, upbeat film. The protagonists are resisting the relentless and all-encompassing state, with little hope of escape. Highly recommended.

Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day was selected as Croatia’s entry for Best International Feature in the 2025 Academy Awards.

• IMDb • trailer • official website •

Come See Me in the Good Light

Come See Me in the Good Light, dir. Ryan White, 2025, USA, 104 min. ❓

Saturday, June 21, 2025, 6:00 pm, New Parkway, Oakland
Friday, June 27, 2025, 3:00 pm, Vogue Theatre

Come See Me
in the Good Light

(🙈 This film was not available for advance screening. It was recently acquired by AppleTV+ and will be streaming some time this fall. I will try to update this post after I see the film, either at Frameline or streaming on AppleTV+.)

Frameline blurb: Poet and activist Andrea Gibson’s work is defined by striking vulnerability. A single line of poetry can hold many — often contrasting — truths. Come See Me in the Good Light, which is directed by Ryan White (👏 The Case Against 8, Frameline38) and produced by comedian and writer Tig Notaro (One Mississippi), echoes this multiplicity with its deeply affecting portrait of Colorado’s Poet Laureate.

After receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, Gibson and their partner, fellow poet Megan Falley, unearth a profound sense of resilience in small, everyday joys. Life’s moments can be both tough and tender, holding grief and humor, and ache and elation, in equal measure. Backed by Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach and executive produced by Sara Bareilles and Brandi Carlile, this Sundance Festival Favorite Award-winning meditation on mortality illuminates, with exquisite tenderness, what it means to really live.

• IMDb • interview with the director and producer Tig Notaro • official website • coming to AppleTV+ fall 2025 •

Dreams in Nightmares

Dreams in Nightmares, dir. Shatara Michelle Ford, 2024, USA/‌Taiwan/‌UK, 128 min. 💖
Saturday, June 21, 2025, 8:30 pm, New Parkway (Oakland)

Dreams in Nightmares

Dreams in Nightmares is a road trip movie, but not in the sense of a buddy comedy; this is definitely a drama. A group of college friends have settled, two in Brooklyn, one in Los Angeles, and the fourth … who knows where? When the other 3 realize they haven’t heard from Kel in months, they set off on a spontaneous road trip to find them. The trip takes them much farther than they expected, both in literal miles driven and in exploring their connections to themselves and to each other. 

Z (Denée Benton, pictured center) has been having dream visions of her ancestors trying to give her some sort of message, but can’t quite get to the part of the dream when the message is actually delivered. The other two struggle to balance artistic expression with paying the bills. The beginning of the film felt a little slow at first, but the pace sustains through the film, and turns out to be just the right speed for the characters to slowly open up. The director and the cast are majority queer and trans Black actors, and that bond to the material really comes through.

Dreams in Nightmares is at its core a character study, with four complicated, deep characters confronting the ways their life choices increase (or sacrifice) their Black, queer, artistic joy (to borrow a phrase from the Frameline program, but I couldn’t have said it better). Definitely a must see.

• IMDb • trailer • official website • Wikipedia •

Drone

Drone, dir. Simon Bouisson, 2024, France, 110 min., in French with English subtitles
⚠️ content advisory: Sexual violence
Saturday, June 21, 2025, 8:30 pm Vogue Theatre

Drone outside Émilie‘s
window, altered to show detail

Émilie is studying architecture, but to pay the bills she is also a camgirl. One night, she notices a drone hovering outside her apartment window (photo enhanced to show detail), but it gradually becomes more invasive and more ominous, especially because it is not at all clear who is controlling it. It’s not a commercially available off-the-shelf model, but apparently a much more sophisticated custom unit. Her stalker remains stubbornly hidden, despite sending her money on her phone, but also becomes more persistent and more sinister. The tension builds to a crescendo, but you’ll have to see it to find out the ending.

The drone clearly is a stand-in for “the male gaze” in its ickiest form, intruding into every aspect of Émilie’s life. Drone is a taut thriller, too, besides a pointed social commentary. Definitely a must see, especially if you like thrillers.

Drone is not included in this year’s Digital Screening Room, but the credits include “avec la participation de Disney+” so you just might get to see it screening some day soon.

• IMDb • trailer • official website [fr] • Emilie

Heightened Scrutiny

Heightened Scrutiny, dir. Sam Feder, 2025, USA, 85 min.
Thursday, June 20, 2025, 7:00pm ACT Toni Rembe Theater

Heightened Scrutiny

In December 2024, Chase Strangio became the first openly trans attorney to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, fighting to overturn Tennessee’s outright ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth. The case, United States v. Skrmetti, is still awaiting a ruling, expected some time this month, before the Court’s summer recess.

In Heightened Scrutiny, we see Chase develop his legal strategy, beginning by arguing against Idaho’s ban on gender-affirming care at the Ninth Circuit (Poe v. Labrador), and we also get interviews with familiar faces including Jelani Cobb and Laverne Cox. Elliott Page makes a cameo appearance, although he doesn’t speak on camera. We see clips of various media, including the pipeline of Fox News to judicial rulings. In the Idaho case, one of the original sponsors of the bill went on a podcast, openly declaring his goal of ending all gender-affirming care for everyone, including adults.

Trans people, and especially trans youth, have become the perverse obsession of the right wing and MAGA, with unprecedented assaults on their safety and on their very existence. Chase Strangio is fighting to preserve some sanity in our legal system, but he does it with a sense of humor, and finds joy even in the darkest moments. The other people interviewed for this documentary provide important context and perspective, giving us a well-rounded view of the case and the stakes involved.

Heightened Scrutiny is definitely a must see, although you may well have the benefit of knowing the outcome of Skrmetti.

• IMDb • trailer • official website • Bluesky: @HeightenedScrutiny.BSky.Social • Instagram: @HeightenedScrutiny •

I Was Born This Way

I Was Born This Way, dir. Daniel Junge & Sam Pollard, 2025, USA, 98 min. 💖💝
Thursday, June 19, 2025, 7:00 pm, KQED Headquarters, 2601 Mariposa St., SF

I Was Born This Way

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you have heard Lady Gaga’s song “Born This Way,” a catchy and uplifting song that, among many other things, was central in the final episode of Andi Mack. But that song didn’t spring from nowhere. Gaga was influenced by a song that was popular in the late 1970s but had largely faded from public awareness. Carl Bean, whose roots were in gospel music, put out “I Was Born This Way,” with the key lyric “I’m happy, I’m carefree, and I’m gay. I was born this way,” way back in 1977.

This documentary traces Bean’s life from early childhood to the 2020s, with the ups and downs of his personal life and his musical career, as well as his work in creating the Minority AIDS Project and the Unity Fellowship Church, emphasizing the importance of working from a place of love and acceptance. In fact, he came into the ministry somewhat by accident. Because of the breadth of Bean’s life work, we hear from people as varied as Lady Gaga, Dionne Warwick, and Rep. Maxine Waters, all hosted by Billy Porter — who finds and rescues the unreleased B-side of “I Was Born This Way.”

The film mirrors Bean’s life, with tremendous joy and moments that will bring tears to your eyes. It is an inspiration on many different levels, and emphatically a MUST SEE.

• IMDb • trailer • official website •

Keep Coming Back (Siempre vuelven)

Keep Coming Back (Siempre vuelven), dir. Sergio de León, 2025, Uruguay/Argentina, 91 min., in Spanish with English subtitles 👏
⚠️ content advisory: homophobic language

Saturday, June 21, 2025, 6:00 pm Roxie Theater
🇺🇸 U.S. premiere

Keep Coming Back
(Siempre vuelven)

Emilio’s mother recently passed away, leaving him with a flock of racing pigeons. The only hope of keeping the pigeons (and not having a “pigeon barbecue”) is to enter a bird in a race and hope to finish at least in the top three. Along for the journey is his mother’s boyfriend, who sings to the pigeon to give it the courage of a World War II hero pigeon named Winkie, who single-handedly (single-wingedly?) saved hundreds of human soldiers. Emilio also passes the time with the periodic gay orgy in his small town.

Okay, I’m guessing that at this point, most readers are either intrigued or moving on to something else. Whichever your reaction, I say, go with it. Keep Coming Back (Siempre vuelven) is a coming-of-age story with some of the most surreal trappings of any film you’re likely to find. It’s beautifully told, with fine performances from Emilio (Bruce Pintos, pictured left), Juan (Juan Wauters, pictured right), and Winkie (pictured center). If the weirdness of the premise hasn’t already scared you off, you will probably be charmed by this film. Highly recommended, but a must see for film students.

• IMDb • trailer • official website [en] •

Lesbian Space Princess

Lesbian Space Princess, dir. Emma Hough Hobbs & Leela Varghese, 2025, Australia, 87 min. 👏

Sunday, June 22, 2025, 8:30 pm, Roxie Theater
🇺🇸 U.S. premiere

Lesbian Space Princess

Saira, twentysomething royal princess of Clitopolis, is painfully introverted and full of crippling self-doubt. It doesn’t help that she has been unable to summon the Royal Labrys, a powerful weapon that is her birthright as a lesbian princess. She has been voted “most boring royal,” and she has just wrecked her eternal soulmate relationship of two weeks, just in time for her birthday and then the Lesbian Ball.

Her now ex-girlfriend gets kidnapped by the evil Straight White Maliens, who demand that Saira bring her labrys as ransom for Kiki. She sets off in a dysfunctional spaceship, meets up with a gay-pop star, and goes on the quest to rescue Kiki. The plot takes various twists and turns, some of them almost formulaic but many of them wildly unexpected. The animation style is engaging, and the story has plenty of wit, including more gay in-jokes than you can count.

It’s fun, well made, light-hearted, and definitely worth seeing. Highly recommended.

• IMDb • trailer • official website •

Māhū: A Trans-Pacific Love Letter

Māhū: A Trans-Pacific Love Letter, dir. Lisette Marie Flanary, 2025, USA, 60 min., in English and Hawaiian 💖
Thursday, June 19, 2025, 5:30 pm, KQED Headquarters, 2601 Mariposa St., SF

Mahu

(note: a search for “Mahu” on the Frameline website will not take you to the page for this film, because of the macrons (horizontal lines) over two of the vowels. You can either find it by time slot or by searching on the rest of the title, or use the link above. Ditto for the hula master Patrick Makuakane.)

“Māhū” can be an epithet hurled at drag queens and transgender people and anyone else who doesn’t properly perform their assigned binary gender, but it is being reclaimed as a point of pride, and was chosen as the name for a multimedia stage performance of Hawai’ian music and dance with an overarching theme of embracing traditional Native Hawai’ian concepts of gender fluidity. This documentary weaves clips from the stage performance with interviews with the performers, giving us a taste of the acceptance and honor that were accorded to māhū people in pre-colonial Hawai’i. It’s a powerful testament, a must see.

The Frameline screening at KQED will be followed by a live performance by hula master Patrick Makuakāne.

• IMDb (filmmaker) • trailer • official website •

Niñxs

Niñxs, Ninxs dir. Kani Lapuerta, 2025, Mexico/Germany, 84 min., in Spanish with English subtitles 💖💝
Saturday, June 21, 2025, 1:30 pm Roxie
🌎 North American premiere
This program will be available in the Digital Screening Room, June 23 through June 30, 2025, anywhere in the United States.

Niñxs

Niñxs is a documentary unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. First of all, the director, Kani Lapuerta, is a transman, which already narrows the field quite a bit. The subject, though, is a young trans girl (about 7 years old at the beginning of the film), Karla Bañuelos, and we follow her through her early teens and into high school, navigating the social, medical, and legal processes of transition, through the Covid crisis and remote learning.

But here is where it gets really unique: in most documentaries about a living person, the filmmaker interviews the subject, but then it is the filmmaker who edits the film, constructs the narrative through line, and adds the voiceover. In Niñxs, though, Karla is involved in nearly every aspect of the process from the beginning. She provides much of the voiceover herself, and clearly had a say on the direction of the story and its visual aesthetic.

Karla’s circumstances are also exceptional. She starts in Mexico City, but the family move to Tepoztlán to get away from the air pollution that is giving Karla asthma. Karla’s parents are aging punks with their own colorful stories of adolescence, and Tepoztlán, less than an hour out of Mexico City, has a reputation as a haven for punks, hippies, and other non-conformists.

Her parents fully support their child’s exploration of gender and her decision to live as a girl. You may be quite surprised, though, at how much support the Mexican legal system gives: the Constitution prohibits discrimination of any kind, meaning that the school is obligated to refer to Karla by her chosen name and gender, allow her to use the girls’ bathroom, and respect her identity. Of course, she gets shit from some of her schoolmates and from random strangers in town, but the support from family, friends, and public officials gives her the room to thrive.

Karla herself sets the tone for the film: “I’d like [the audience] to laugh, that it isn’t a tragic film, like most of the ones we appear in.” In that respect, Niñxs is a rousing success, celebrating and empowering Karla and trans-ness in general. It is unequivocally a must see, but most especially for trans youth.

• IMDb • trailer • official website [en/es] •

Plainclothes

Plainclothes, dir. Carmen Emmi, 2025, USA, 95 min.
Thursday, June 19, 2025, 5:30 pm Vogue Theatre 👏
⚠️ content advisory: homophobia, police entrapment

Plainclothes
photo by Ethan Palmer
courtesy of Sundance Institute

Frameline blurb: Lucas (Tom Blyth), a closeted undercover cop, falls for a married man (Russell Tovey) he’s assigned to entrap in Carmen Emmi’s ’90s-set erotic drama Plainclothes. Initially focused on his duty to arrest men cruising in shopping mall bathrooms, his mission takes an unexpected turn after a charged encounter with one of his marks. What begins as a sting operation becomes intimate and volatile, blurring the lines between secrecy and desire, watcher and watched.

Raised in the shadow of his grandfather’s badge and working in a homophobic department, Lucas starts to crack under the weight of his messy feelings. Editor Erik Vogt-Nilsen’s jagged, VHS-warped style, threaded with haunting flashbacks, mirrors Lucas’s fraying mind, each grain pulsing with anxiety and self-doubt. Plainclothes simmers with urgency, its story of repression and control striking a nerve in a time when queer visibility and freedom are once again under threat.

---

Film Queen commentary: In 2025, LGBTQ+ rights and our very existence are under threat in ways that bring 1997 uncomfortably to mind. There are hints at redemption for some of the characters as the film winds down, but don’t expect a classic Hollywood happy ending. Plainclothes is a strongly told story, filled with pathos and inner conflict, but well worth seeing. (Besides that, Tom Blyth as Lucas, the undercover cop, is gorgeous, with piercing green eyes.) Highly recommended.

• IMDb • trailer • official website • Wikipedia •

Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency

Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency, dir. Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens, 2025, USA, 71 min. ❤️‍🔥
Friday, June 20, 2025, 11:00 am, Roxie Theater
🌐 World premiere
This program will be available in the Digital Screening Room, June 23 through June 30, 2025, anywhere in the United States.
⚠️ Warning: This film contains environmental destruction, explicit ecosexuality and performance art

Playing with Fire: An
Ecosexual Emergency

Beth Stephens &
Annie Sprinkle

Pooja, Sir (राजागंज)

Pooja, Sir (राजागंज), dir. Deepak Rauniyar, 2024, Nepal/USA/Norway, 115 min., in Nepali, Hindi, and Maithili, with English subtitles 💖
Thursday, June 19, 2025, 8:00 pm Vogue Theatre

Pooja, Sir

“Inspired by real events.” Detective Inspector Pooja is called in from Kathmandu (the capital) to investigate a kidnapping in the south of the country, where the majority of the population is Madhesi (मधेशी, also transliterated Madheshi), which is to say they do not speak Nepali as their first language. The story takes place in 2015, during a period of considerable unrest. The Madhesi people have historically been discriminated against in Nepal, and the proposed constitution in 2015 would have enshrined that discrimination, removing many protections from the 2008 interim constitution. Because of the protests, the draft constitution was amended to address their concerns, although issues persisted for some time after.

Detective Inspector Pooja has a lot on her plate. She lives with her wife and her aging (and childishly whiny) father. She also binds her chest, wears her hair very short, and asks that she be addressed as “sir” rather than “ma’am.” Despite her father’s bellyaching about her prolonged absence, she agrees to take the case. She teams up with Mamata, a local Madhesi policewoman, and begins to unravel the case, facing also some bigoted actions of some Pahari (non-Madhesi) policemen. One of the boys kidnapped is the son of a local M.P. and the headmistress of the local school. Both parents seem at times more concerned with protecting their own status than with rescuing their son. And there are the sometimes violent protests going on around them, and other complications, but Pooja is determined to see the case through to the end.

I knew almost nothing about Nepali society, and certainly had never heard of the Madhesi people. I knew there was a major earthquake in Nepal in early 2015, but heard little about the constitution or the drama around it. Pooja, Sir provides an enlightening window into Nepal and how gender, race, language, caste, and sexuality intersect. Besides that, it’s also a solid procedural drama in its own right. It’s a must see.

One little detail I stumbled upon in the end credits is that the part of the son of the M.P. and the headmistress, is played by Raunak Yadav. That name is significant because the surname Yadav is Madhesi.

• IMDb • trailer • official website •

The Secret of Me

The Secret of Me, dir. Grace Hughes-Hallett, 2025, UK, 80 min. 💖
⚠️ content advisory: themes of abuse
Monday, June 23, 2025, 5:45 pm Roxie Theater

The Secret of Me

If you’re reading this blog, I figure you probably already know what “intersex” means, but, just in case, it refers to any person whose body is not unambiguously either male or female. That includes chromosomal and hormonal variations, as well as other anatomical variations. Historically, many people born with intersex conditions have been shoe-horned into one or the other binary gender as infants, long before they have any say in the matter. Worse yet, they are often raised in ignorance and/or shame of the true nature of their situation.

The Secret of Me focuses primarily on Jim Ambrose, who didn’t know until he got his medical records in college that his gender had been reassigned at birth, and everything his parents had told him was a lie. As Jim delves deeper into the subject, he comes across the stories of Dr. John Money and his horrifying abuse of some of his patients, most famously David Reimer, who Money claimed had embraced his assigned female gender when that was very much not the case.

Jim Ambrose saw an article in Rolling Stone about Reimer, the first person to be publicly visible as a victim of Dr. Money; that led Jim to contact ISNA, the Intersex Society of North America, and started his activism. We see Jim return to the neighborhood where he grew up and confront some of the people from his childhood. It’s a solid presentation of Jim’s story and some of the background behind it, never sensationalized, mostly told by Jim and other people with intersex conditions themselves, underlining the case that involuntary infant sex reassignment is neither effective nor ethical.

It’s a must see for everyone, and even moreso if you or a loved one are intersex.

• IMDb • trailer • official website • 2023 intersex documentary Every Body (Frameline47), not reviewed here but very much worth seeing •

Frameline 49 shorts programs (index)

With the exception of a handful that didn’t have advance screeners, I have seen all the shorts in the ten shorts programs of this year’s Frameline. Here are my thoughts.

First, by way of “tl;dr,” the best overall program is “It’s a Family Affair,” followed by runner-up “Outside Voices.” “First Impressions,” “Fun in Shorts,” “Homegrown,” and “Scared Shortless” are all pretty good.

The program I liked least overall is “Queer Quickies,” although obviously that is a category of film very much subject to individual tastes, so your mileage may vary. “Alien Extravaganza” and “Saturday Morning Cartoons” are mixed bags, with some very good and some not so good. “Truth Be Told” is dragged down by a single clunker, but it’s 30% of the runtime of the whole program.

Links to my full reviews are below, with lists of the films in each program. A red question mark ❓ indicates a film that was not available for advance review.

Alien Extravaganza (shorts program)

“Alien Extravaganza” (shorts program)
Monday, June 23, 3:30pm, Vogue Theatre

Update: This program will be available in the Digital Screening Room, June 23 through June 30, 2025, anywhere in the United States.

Frameline program description: A queer, colourful, experimental galaxy of new filmmaking. Join us for a voyage into alien aesthetics, cosmic glamour, genderfluid and pluralistic futures. Curated by Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian (Doppelgängers³, Frameline48) in partnership with the London Short Film Festival.

• Arctic Diva, dir. Federico Barni, 2025, UK, 17 min., North American premiere 👏
• Entre Marte y la Terra (Between Mars and Earth), dir. Diego Marzuil, 2023, Argentina, 11 min., in Spanish, North American premiere 👎
• Br00dm0ther’s e-Fable, dir. Zijing Zhao, 2024, UK, 8 min., North American premiere 👎
• The Burden, dir. Tish Arana, 2023, USA, 15 min., in English and Japanese 💖
• But wait… there’s more!, dir. Kialy Tihngang, 2023, UK, 3 min., U.S. premiere ❓
• The Last Story on Earth, dir. Aaron Immediato, 2024, USA, 18 min. 🙂
• PRIMALDIAL MAGMA _ ZYGMUTROPHOOZE, dir. Mirrored Fatality, 2024, USA, 7 min. ❓
• REDMAN, dir. Edith Morris, 2025, UK, 1 min., International premiere ❓
• Space Plug, dir. Marcus Anthony Thomas, 2023, UK, 14 min., no dialogue 👎

First Impressions, Lasting Connections: Date Night Shorts

“First Impressions, Lasting Connections: Date Night Shorts”
Tuesday, June 24, 8:30pm, New Parkway Theater, Oakland

Update: This program will be available in the Digital Screening Room, June 23 through June 30, 2025, anywhere in the United States.

• Divine Intervention, dir. Ravenna Tran, 2024, UK, 17 min. 👏
• Hold Me Close, dir. Aurora Brachman & LaTajh Simmons-Weaver, 2025, USA, 19 min. 👏
• I’m the Most Racist Person I Know, dir. Leela Varghese, 2025, Australia, 13 min. 💖
• Un movimiento extraño (An Odd Turn), dir. Francisco Lezama, 2024, Argentina/‌France, 22 min., in Spanish with subtitles 😑

Fun in Shorts (2025)

“Fun in Shorts” (shorts program) (updated)
Sunday, June 22, 11:00am, Roxie Theater
Saturday, June 28, 3:30pm, Roxie Theater

Update: This program will be available in the Digital Screening Room, June 23 through June 30, 2025, anywhere in the United States. However, the film Gender Reveal is not included in the streaming package.

• Gender Reveal, dir. Mo Matton, 2024, Canada, 13 min., in English and French 👏
• Girlfriend Girlfriend, dir. Sara Werner, 2025, USA, 5 min., 🌐 World premiere 👏
• Homolita, dir. Jude Dry, 2025, USA, 8 min. 👏
• Poreless, dir. Harris Doran, 2025, USA, 13 min. 👏
• Sister! dir. John Onieal, 2025, USA, 14 min. ❓
• Space Daddy, dir. Stephen Carruthers, 2025, UK, 10 min., 🌐 World premiere 👏
• Sweet Talkin’ Guy, dir. Spencer Wardwell & Dylan Wardwell, 2025, USA, 4 min. 💖
• Teth, dir. Peter Darney, 2024, UK, 13 min., in Welsh, 🌎 North American premiere 👏

Homegrown (2025 shorts program)

“Homegrown” (2025 shorts program)
Friday, June 20, 1:30pm, Roxie Theater
Saturday, June 28, 11:00am, Roxie Theater

Update: This program will be available in the Digital Screening Room, June 23 through June 30, 2025, anywhere in the United States.

• AutoErotica: We Buy Gay Stuff, dir. Jeremy von Stilb, 2025, USA, 17 min., 🌐 World premiere 👏
• Budget Paradise, dir. LaTajh Simmons Weaver, 2025, USA, 14 min. 😑
• En memoria, dir. Roberto Fatal, 2024, USA/Mexico, 11 min., in English and Spanish 👏
• Liminality, dir. Tess Bliven, 2025, USA, 13 min. 👏
• Rainbow Girls, dir. Nana Duffuor, 2025, USA, 16 min., 🌐 World premiere 😑
• Thanks, Babs! dir. Jen Rainin & Rivkah Beth Medow, 2025, USA, 14 min., 🌐 World premiere 👍

It’s a Family Affair (shorts program)

“It’s a Family Affair” (shorts program)
Saturday, June 28, 1:00pm, Roxie Theater

Frameline description: This program looks at the relationships we have with our families and with ourselves. From self-love to the love of your deceased grandma, this collection of shorts will have you in your feels.

• Correct Me If I’m Wrong (如你所愿), dir. Hao Zhou, 2025, Germany/USA, 23 min., in Mandarin Chinese 👏
• Grandma Nai, Who Played Favorites (ចៅសំណព្វចិត្ត), dir. Chheangkea, 2025, Cambodia/France/USA, 19 min., in Khmer 💖
• Tara, dir. Ashutosh S. Shankar, 2025, India/UK/USA, 23 min., in Hindi & English, 🌐 World premiere 💖
• Who Raised You? dir. Dani Guzman, 2025, USA, 10 min. 👍
• You Don’t Have to Like Me, dir. Safiyah Chiniere, 2023, USA, 10 min. 💖

Outside Voices: Leaders in Queer Cinema Supported by Colin Higgins Foundation

“Outside Voices: Leaders in Queer Cinema Supported by Colin Higgins Foundation,” Wednesday, June 25, 6:00pm, Roxie Theater

• Baba I’m Fine, dir. Karina Dandashi, 2025, USA, 13 min., in English and Arabic 💖
• Barbie Boy, dir. Remi Gabriel, 2024, USA, 15 min., in English and Spanish 💖
• A Bird Hit My Window and Now I’m a Lesbian, dir. AJ Dubler & Carmela Murphy, 2024, USA, 8 min. 👏
• Unholy, dir. Daisy Friedman, 2025, USA, 13 min., in English and Hebrew 🙂

Colin Higgins was the director of Harold and Maude. His foundation now gives grants to support young queer filmmakers. This year’s winner and some past winners will show their films.

Queer Quickies (2025 erotic shorts)

“Queer Quickies” (2025 erotic shorts program)
Monday, June 23, 10:00pm, Roxie Theater
⚠️🔞 sexually explicit content

Frameline description: Check your inhibitions at the door (and throw your hang-ups out as well) for this collection of erotic shorts from the past, present, and future that are playful, surprising, and explicit.

• The angel, dir. Dorian Wood, 2023, USA, 18 min. 👎
• Fist, dir. Romy Alizée, 2021, France, 3 min., no dialogue 👎
• O Faz-Tudo (The Handyman), dir. Fábio Leal, 2025, Brazil, 5 min., in Portuguese, 🌎 North American premiere ❓
• Mouse Klub Konfidential, dir. James Robert Baker, 1976, USA, 15 min., 🌐 World premiere of the newly restored film 👍
• A Night in the Life, dir. Jonzu, 2025, USA, 6 min. 😑
• Orgy Every Other Day, dir. Samuel Döring, 2024, Germany/USA, 13 min. 👍
• Romy et Laure… et le mystère du plug enchanté (Romy & Laure… and the Mystery of the Enchanted Plug), dir. Romy Alizée & Laure Giappiconi, 2020, France, 12 min., in French 🙄
• The Wash, dir. Mike Feswick, 2025, USA, 14 min. 🥱

Saturday Morning Cartoons (adult shorts program)

“Saturday Morning Cartoons” (adult shorts program)
Saturday, June 21, 2025, 11:00am, Roxie Theater

Update: This program will be available in the Digital Screening Room, June 23 through June 30, 2025, anywhere in the United States. However, the films 27, Carrotica, and What It Takes (Pour exister) are not included in the streaming package, although you can watch 27 online for free.

Don’t let the name fool you. From stories about queer erotic encounters to lusting over carrots, these animated shorts are strictly for adults.

• 27, dir. Flóra Anna Buda, 2023, France/Hungary, 11 min., in Hungarian 😑
• Carrotica, dir. Daniel Sterlin-Altman, 2024, Germany, 13 min., 🇺🇸 U.S. premiere 👏
• Quimera (Chimera), dir. Gael Jara & Martín André, 2024, Chile, 11 min., in Spanish 👏
• The Eating of an Orange, dir. May Kindred-Boothby, 2024, UK, 7 min. 🙂
• 嗨爸 (Hey, Dad), dir. Wei-Fan Wang, 2024, Taiwan, 6 min., in Mandarin Chinese 👏
• Homunculus, dir. Bonheur Suprême, 2025, France/Italy, 17 min., in French, English, Italian, and Russian, 🇺🇸 U.S. premiere 💖
• Tiger Lily Mountain Pass, dir. Nate King, 2024, USA, 5 min. 🙂
• Two Black Boys in Paradise, dir. Baz Sells, 2025, UK, 9 min. 💖
• Pour exister (What It Takes), dir. Fabien Corre & Kelsi Phụng, 2023, France, 2 min., in French ❓

Scared Shortless (2025)

“Scared Shortless” (shorts program)
Saturday, June 28, 2025, 5:45 pm, Roxie Theater
⚠️ content warning: verbal and physical abuse, intentional self-harm

Update: This program will be available in the Digital Screening Room, June 23 through June 30, 2025, anywhere in the United States.

• Clean Slate, dir. Emily May Jampel, 2025, USA, 9 min. 👏
• Dope Fiend, dir. Rosanagh Griffiths, 2023, UK, 13 min. 👏
• Goodbye Party, dir. Sophia Lou & Nathan Pearson, 2025, USA, 13 min. 🌐 World premiere 👏
• The Holly King, dir. Tim O’Leary, 2025, USA, 10 min. 👏
• Munchies, dir. Brittany Alexia Young, 2025, USA, 11 min. 👏
• ⚠️Take Care, dir. Brittany Ashley, 2025, USA, 11 min. 🌐 World premiere 👎
• ⚠️Talk Shit, dir. Will Thede & Ben Weiss, 2025, USA, 13 min. 👏

Truth Be Told (2025 documentary shorts)

“Truth Be Told” (2025 documentary shorts)
Tuesday, June 24, 3:30pm, Vogue Theatre

Update: This program will be available in the Digital Screening Room, June 23 through June 30, 2025, anywhere in the United States.

Frameline description: At a time when so much of our queer culture is under attack, this program celebrates the archives and the memories of our ancestors and paves a path toward our future.

• ⚠️Dr. XYZ: A Medical Drag Transthology, dir. El Jaunts, 2024, UK, 14 min., 🇺🇸U.S. premiere 👏
• Everywhere I Look, dir. November Nolan, 2025, USA, 16 min. 👍
• Lloyd Wong, Unfinished, dir. Lesley Loksi Chan, 2025, Canada, 29 min., 🇺🇸U.S. premiere 🥱
• The Roaming Center for Magnetic Alternatives, dir. Brydie O’Connor, 2025, USA, 20 min., 🌐 World premiere 💖
• Shelly’s Leg, dir. Wes Hurley, 2025, USA, 16 min. 💖

Frameline49: here we go!

Frameline49

The 49th annual Frameline San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival is nearly here. I’ve been getting a head start with advance screeners, and will begin posting reviews shortly. Of course, quite a few of the screenings are already “At Rush” (not available for purchase or Gold Card reservation, but will have some tickets released just before showtime).

I’m starting with the shorts programs. I’ve already seen most of the ones that have screeners, so I’m just waiting on a couple of stragglers and will post those this week. I will also get to as many features as I can before the festival starts on Wednesday, June 18th, and more over the course of the festival.

I haven’t yet seen particulars on the streaming setup for this year’s Frameline, but I am assured that most of the films will be included. Some may be “geo-fenced” or otherwise restricted, but you’ll have to check directly with Frameline for those details.

SFTFF 2025: Submissions are now open!

The San Francisco Transgender Film Festival (SFTFF) is now accepting submissions for the 2025 festival, to be held November 13 to 23, 2025, at the Roxie Theater and online. This year, they are prioritizing films 20 minutes or less, including narrative, documentary, experimental, animated, and music video, created by transgender and genderqueer people.

For more information, check out the SFTFF Submissions page.