“We Belong Together (Except When We Don’t)” (shorts program)
Friday, June 19, 2026, 8:00 PM, New Parkway Theatre, Oakland
- 🙂 First Death, dir. Alyssa Lerner, 2026, USA, 27 min.
🇺🇸 U.S. premiere - 🤩 Kiloran Bay, dir. Michael Bruce, 2026, UK, 13 min.
- 🙂 The Long Con, dir. Aitch Alberto, 2026, USA, 14 min.
🌉 Bay Area premiere - ❓ Method Cowboy, dir. Carlos Valdivia, 2026, USA, 14 min.
Bay Area premiere - 🤩 Never Never Never, dir. John Sheedy, 2025, UK/Australia, 19 min.
🌉 Bay Area premiere - 😁 Notice Me, dir. Amy Leonard, 2026, UK, 19 min.
🇺🇸 U.S. premiere - 😐 Static, dir. Attila Tayefeh Ghalehbegi, 2026, USA, 5 min.
🌉 Bay Area premiere
(The shorts may screen in a different order than listed here.)
🙂 First Death, dir. Alyssa Lerner, 2026, USA, 27 min.
🇺🇸 U.S. premiere
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| First Death |
Frameline blurb: When Soul #659 returns to Sky Headquarters after a short and messy first life as Margot, she plots to kill the woman she loved on Earth to force them into the next life together. From the director of the Audience Award-winning short from Frameline43, 👌 Bubble, First Death stars Kimia Behpoornia (Abbott Elementary) and Dylan Mulvaney.
“[Time is] the ticking clock of death that shatters your internal peace. And your reminder to live fully.”
A bit jumbled, complicated by my mishearing the name that #659 would have on earth as “Marco,” so I was waiting for the gender change. Also felt like the story was too extensive to do justice in a short film. We barely got to know Margot, let alone Leah, and saw only a glimpse of the whole concept of birth, life, death, and rebirth, particularly its bureaucratic “mean girls” aspect.
Worth seeing, but felt incomplete. Recommended, and I’ll definitely take a second look if it gets expanded into a feature.
• IMDb: director • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •
🤩 Kiloran Bay, dir. Michael Bruce, 2026, UK, 13 min.
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| Kiloran Bay |
Frameline blurb: Starring Alan Cumming and Jack Wolfe, Kiloran Bay is a musical short set amid the wild beauty of the Scottish Hebrides and the fierce joy of a wedding cèilidh. A moving story of queer joy and self-acceptance, it follows a man returning to his hometown, where he faces the forces that drove him away.
Come for the Alan Cumming, stay for the cèilidh, the running on the beach, and most of all the feels. Cumming and the actors playing his character’s younger selves fully inhabit the ecstasy and the agony of young love in an uptight traditional community. Definitely a must see.
• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •
Two technical notes: (1) at least on the review copy, the closed captions are auto-generated, so they miss the Scottish place names, like Kiloran (the bay), Colonsay (the island, Colbhasa in Scottish Gaelic), and Scalasaig (Sgalasaig, the largest town on the island). (2) Although the story is set in the Hebrides, west of Glasgow, most of the location shots are actually on the east coast, east of Edinburgh.
🙂 The Long Con, dir. Aitch Alberto, 2026, USA, 14 min.
🌉 Bay Area premiere
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| The Long Con |
Frameline blurb: Directed by Aitch Alberto (💖 Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Frameline47) and starring Nava Mau (Baby Reindeer) and Oliver Stark (9-1-1), The Long Con is a desert-set crime romance about a runaway bride and her grifter lover reunited at a roadside motel after a con goes sideways. With stolen cash, sirens on the horizon, and betrayal simmering between them, their love plays out as foreplay, power struggle, and survival tactic. Violent, tender, and darkly funny, the film builds toward a single truth: no matter how badly they hurt each other, running alone was never an option — they were always destined to choose each other.
A decent setup for a crime spree road trip movie, although it’s not a genre I find very appealing. I was a little bit curious about how the duo got to this point and where things might go from here, but not a lot curious. Recommended if the description appeals to you.
• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •
❓ Method Cowboy, dir. Carlos Valdivia, 2026, USA, 14 min.
🌉 Bay Area premiere
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| Method Cowboy |
Frameline blurb: When a struggling actor feigns being gay to land the role of a lifetime in an Oscar-bait Cowboy Western, he decides to transform himself for the role, blurring the lines between reality and performance.
(This film was not available for advance review.)
• IMDb: (probably) director? • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •
🤩 Never Never Never, dir. John Sheedy, 2025, UK/Australia, 19 min., in English and Welsh
🌉 Bay Area premiere
🏆 Winner of the prestigious Iris Prize
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| Never Never Never |
Frameline blurb: In a quaint Welsh fishing village, a young Shirley Bassey impersonator and a fisherman are swept into a secret romance, battling the tides of family and tradition as they search for the courage to claim their own happiness.
Filmed in what an Australian might call “Old South Wales” (specifically Tenby, near the southwest corner of Wales), with considerable parts of the dialogue in the local language. First Teth, now Never Never Never — let’s hope it’s contagious and we see more LGBTQ+ films in Welsh. Gofynnwch i’r ceidwad am docynnau tymor!
It starts out on familiar ground: a young queer man dreams of performing on stage, but meets resistance from his more conservative father. But the details give the story its own unique flavor, from the Shirley Bassey obsession to the fishing boat to the father turning out not to be quite the one-dimensional grouch he at first seems to be. It’s a good story, well told, with some beautiful visuals. Definitely a must see.
• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •
😁 Notice Me, dir. Amy Leonard, 2026, UK, 19 min.
🇺🇸 U.S. premiere
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| Notice Me |
Frameline blurb: Two lesbian neighbors in London's East End navigate romance and connection through messy, heartfelt situations, going to ridiculous lengths to get closer to each other.
Em, a podcaster from Hastings (on the Channel coast southeast of London) has decided to move to London to fulfill her dyke dreams. She has some awkward moments with the neighbors but is seriously drawn to one in particular. The awkwardness gets in the way, dampening (literally) her self-confidence. Will she get over herself and get the girl?
It’s an engaging story, with a few (intentionally) cringe moments to set up the drama, but mostly fun to watch. Highly recommended, a must see if you’re starting out in a new city.Note: the auto-generated closed captions annoyingly bleep out not only words like fuck, but even dyke and queer. Not at all the filmmaker’s fault, but quite irritating.
• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •
😐 Static, dir. Attila Tayefeh Ghalehbegi, 2026, USA, 5 min.,
shot on film, no spoken dialogue
🌉 Bay Area premiere
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| Static |
Frameline blurb: Two soldiers in a small unit stranded in the field await a signal from their radio. The first soldier tests the others’ attentiveness with furtive glances, using a mirror to reflect sunlight onto the second’s face, eventually revealing their relationship as reciprocal, not just imagined. But when the signal they’ve been waiting for finally arrives while the two are separated during a routine watchman shift, they must confront the possibility that the tenderness they’ve protected against erasure, the thing that has kept them alive, might also be mere rehearsal for the heartsickness promised by the world to come.
I didn’t really get drawn in, because the situation is so generic: some soldiers are somewhere for some reason, waiting for some kind of message from somebody, and otherwise mostly just killing time (with no hint of “being under enemy fire” or any of those tropes), with some hints of a personal connection between two of them, that we don’t really explore. Not bad enough for me to say “not recommended,” but definitely meh. Just flat boring from beginning to end.
The only dialogue is coded messages on the radio, things like “3-1-9-7-5,” so you don’t need subtitles.
• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •
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