Frameline48 Cross-Reference: Short Films Reviewed on this Site

This is a list of all the short films from Frameline48 that are reviewed on this website. After the film title is a shorthand for the program or programs in which that short film screened. The symbols are the same ones used in the cross-reference list of feature films.

• AT&S: Across Time & Space: Black Queer Stories
• CMWDN: Come to My Window: Date Night
• LLS: Love Lies Scheming
• CMWLL: Come to My Window + Love Lies (compilation streaming program)
• Cruel: Cruel Summer
• Fun: Fun in Shorts
• Home: Homegrown Shorts
• QPSS: Queer Places, Spaces, & Shorts
• Rise Up: Rise Up: Doc Shorts
• Wild: Wild Combination

Frameline48 Cross-Reference: Feature Films Reviewed on this Site

Here are all the feature-length films from Frameline48 that are reviewed on this website. Not counting duplicate entries, that’s 52 feature films, plus 9 programs of shorts (see next posting).

Symbols: 🌐 World premiere • 🏁 International premiere • 🌎 North American premiere • 🇺🇸 U.S. premiere • 🌊 West Coast premiere • 🌉 Bay Area premiere • 🏳️‍🌈 Queer premiere • 🏆 Frameline award winner • 🏅 Frameline award honorable mention

The Judgment (المحاكمة)

The Judgment (المحاكمة) (El Muhakamah), dir. Marwan Mokbel, 2023 Egypt/Lebanon/USA, 111 min., in English with some Arabic with subtitles 👎

Monday, June 24, 2024, 8:30 PM, Vogue Theatre • Bay Area premiere

available in the Digital Screening Room streaming encore

⚠️Content advisory: contains disturbing images

The Judgment (المحاكمة)

Mohamed (or Mo, as he now prefers to be called) has lived in the United States for his entire life, except the year he was 14, when he was sent to live with family in Egypt, an experience he has mostly purged from his conscious memory. A family emergency compels him to fly to Egypt, with his Egyptian boyfriend in tow. His mother needs him to sign some legal papers, but she refuses to see or even speak to him. He becomes convinced that a friend of his mother’s has placed a curse on him, and he goes farther and farther off the deep end, pushing away his lover, trying to break the curse. At the end, there is some resolution, but not nearly enough to redeem the film. It’s a weird, creepy religious horror film, which is not a combination I could ever imagine working well, even with decent acting performances, direction, and production. Not recommended.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • preview • other • Rotten Tomatoes: [not yet scored] •

Meanwhile

Meanwhile, dir. Catherine Gund, 2024 USA, 89 min. 💖

Sunday, June 23, 2024, 12:00 PM, Vogue Theatre • West Coast premiere, Queer premiere

available in the Digital Screening Room streaming encore (within California only)

Meanwhile

Meanwhile is a non-linear exploration of race, gender, sexual orientation, poetry, painting, sculpture, and dance, history and the future, life and death. It is softly contemplative, with music to match that mood.

America in the 21st century is a tangle of contradictions. In many ways, we have made tangible progress in dismantling racism, and yet white supremacy is still very much a visible presence. We ended the legal structure of chattel slavery, but we have done far too little to undo its legacy, often preferring to cover our eyes to shield our hearts from the reality that there is still so much more that needs to be done.

This gentle film is also deeply thought-provoking, very much a MUST SEE, most especially for anyone who would pretend that America has put racism in the rear-view mirror.

• IMDb [director] • Official website • Filmmaker • preview • other •

Throuple

Throuple, dir. Greyson Horst, 2024 USA, 89 min. 🙂

Thursday, June 27, 2024, 3:30 PM, Roxie

(preceded by the short Dream Burger, which is in the “Wild Combination” streaming shorts)

available (separately) in the Digital Screening Room streaming encore

Throuple

Michael (pictured, left) is an aspiring musician, working by day as an executive assistant. He’s also an annoying self-centered wishy-washy mess. He meets Georgie (center) and Connor (right), a married couple. Michael is much more interested in Georgie than in Connor, setting up a delicate balancing act of throupling up without destroying the couple. Various situations with Georgie and Connor, and with his best friend Tristan and her longtime girlfriend Abby, force Michael out of his bubble to confront who he wants to be and how he wants to relate to others. I won’t give it away, but I thought the ending was abrupt and unsatisfying, as if they wanted to have a couple more scenes but ran out of time. I’m not a big fan of annoying protagonists, but I’ll give this one a “recommended.”

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram: @ThroupleTheMovie • Facebook • preview  • Throuple Live! teaser • other •

Second Nature

Second Nature, dir. Drew Denny, 2024 USA/Netherlands, 53 min. 💖🦁🐒🦆🐠

Sunday, June 23, 2024, 4:30 PM, Vogue Theatre (special sneak preview screening)

available in the Digital Screening Room streaming encore

Second Nature

As a child, I was taught that nature and natural selection prescribe certain gender roles and behaviors. Females are smaller, less aggressive, more selective in mating, and more nurturing with their offspring. Males are larger, more aggressive, more likely to be promiscuous, and less likely to be involved in caring for their young. That turns out to be a view shaped by projecting 19th-century human norms onto animals, who often show much greater complexity. First, there are numerous species in which an individual can change its sex, and in some cases change and change back. Every mammal species and many other animals have been found to engage in homosexual behavior, both males and females. And bonobos, one of our closest genetic relatives, live in largely peaceful groups in a matriarchal structure in which the females are dominant in almost every respect. Disputes are generally settled by having sex, and the physical violence that does occur is often female-on-male.

The bottom line, as this wonderful documentary illustrates with copious examples, is that humans are the only primate species with taboos against homosexual behavior and gender nonconformity. It is not homosexuality that is abnormal, it is homophobia that is abnormal. Along the way, filmmaker Drew Denny interviews multiple BIPOC wildlife experts, because the “traditional” way of looking at animal gender and sexuality is deeply rooted in white cis-male patriarchy. The reality is that diversity is an evolutionary benefit, and rigid conformity is an evolutionary risk. Second Nature is a joy to watch, and definitely a MUST SEE, especially if you want to answer back people who insist that there are only two sexes and that biological sex determines gender.

• IMDb [director] • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram: @SecondNatureDoc • Facebook • preview • other •

Best Years

Best Years (episodes 1 through 6), dir. Jordan Hidalgo, 2024 USA, 50 min. total 👍

Saturday, June 22, 2024, 1:00 PM, Vogue Theatre • World premiere

(screened with ILY, BYE, which also screens in “Fun in Shorts (2024)”)

also available (separately) in the Digital Screening Room streaming encore

Best Years

Troy (Josh Bonzie, pictured) recently moved to Brooklyn with his friend Pat and his then-boyfriend Chance, but Troy and Chance broke up, and haven’t yet post-processed the breakup to see if they might reconcile. Troy is working as a busboy/‌dishwasher and otherwise moping about the house listening to Enya and making Mickey Mouse pancakes in his underwear. Pat is trying to get a job with the mayor’s re-election campaign. Billie, another tenant in the building who sometimes acts as a proxy for the landlord, buttonholes Troy into helping two new tenants move in, one of whom, Abel, catches Troy’s fancy (shown here is the moment Troy meets Abel). Troy and Abel begin getting to know one another, complicating the “will they or won’t they” reunion with Chance.

Some of the characters, especially the neighbor Billie, are basically non-stop irritating, only rarely to comedic effect. I just don’t find seeing irritating people bickering to be very funny. Also, the first two episodes mostly establish Troy, Pat, Chance, and Billie; they did little to hook the audience, and we don’t even see Abel until episode 3. The series improves from that point forward, with less obnoxo-bickering and more actual characterization. It’s worth sitting through the first two episodes (although I wouldn’t begrude you a bit of fast-forwarding) to get to the better material later in the series. Highly recommended.

• IMDb [director] • TMDB • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram:@Jordan23_Films • Facebook • preview • other •

A House is Not a Disco

A House is Not a Disco, dir. Brian J. Smith, 2024 USA, 91 min. 👍

Saturday, June 29, 2024, 6:30 PM, Herbst Theatre

plus Digital Screening Room streaming encore (within California only)

A House is Not a Disco

Filmmaker Brian J. Smith is best known on camera for Sense8 and The Matrix Resurrections, but also appears in Frameline48’s Haze (Friday, June 28, 8:30 PM, Roxie, review to follow). A House is Not a Disco chronicles a year (on- and off-season) of Fire Island Pines, New York, a gay beach enclave just 50 miles from New York City. We meet year-round residents and summer partiers, political activists working to make The Pines more inclusive, including people who’ve been coming since the 1970s and people there for the first time. Fire Island (which also includes the neighboring Cherry Grove, separated by a wilderness area known as The Meatrack for its former reputation as a late-night cruising area) was devastated by HIV/AIDS, with a heavy death toll and an emotional toll on those who survived. Now the challenge Fire Island faces an even deeper existential challenge: climate change has accelerated the erosion of the barrier islands just south of Long Island, and threatens to inundate them completely by around mid-century. Fire Island’s reputation as a haven mostly for affluent white cis gay men also plays heavily into the history, as a new generation struggles to change that reputation. A new park in The Pines honoring Martha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera is a strong step towards inclusiveness.

The story woven together is interesting, especially for anyone with a connection to Fire Island, but I just didn’t really find it compelling enough to warrant a “must see” rating. Still highly recommended, though.

• IMDb • Official website • Instagram: @AHouseIsNotADisco • inside look video • Rotten Tomatoes: 100% •

Desire Lines

Desire Lines, dir. Jules Rosskam, 2024 USA, 81 min. 💖

Saturday, June 22, 2024, 6:00 PM, New Parkway Theatre

plus Digital Screening Room streaming encore (within California only)

⚠️Content advisory: contains nudity and discussions of sexuality, but no explicit depictions.

Desire Lines

There are transgender men (in outdated terms, “female-to-male”) who sexually desire cisgender gay men. Among the first people ever to talk about this issue, at least from a first-person perspective, was Lou Sullivan, who was very public about being trans, about being into gay men, and ultimately about having HIV/AIDS (something he viewed as an ironic counterpoint to all the gender clinics and others who told him that he couldn’t possibly function as a gay man).

Doppelgängers³ (Doppelgangers3)

Doppelgängers³, dir. Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian, 2024 UK/USA, 73 min., in English, Armenian, and French, fully subtitled in English 👍

Monday, June 24, 2024, 8:30 PM, New Parkway

Digital Screening Room streaming encore

Doppelgängers³

Dr. Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian has worked in fields as diverse as SETI research, architecture, and textile design. Her personal heritage is a mix of French Algerian and Armenian. In this documentary, she explores some questions that arise when we think about colonizing the moon and beyond. How can a small colony, perhaps a dozen or at most a few hundred people, represent the diversity of human experience, in terms of race and language, but also in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, and political outlook? What psychological, sociological, cultural, economic, ecological, and philosophical issues need to be studied? She interviews everyone from ubiquitous theoretical physicist Michio Kaku to a trans rights activist in Armenia.

There’s quite a lot of interesting material, but it felt a bit scattershot, jumping about without a cohesive focus. It was thought-provoking, but I couldn’t help feeling it could have been more. Recommended.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other • Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stepanian Doppelgangers3 Schrodinger’s Cat

Update: Shorts Programs

The newly reviewed shorts are (by program):

• Fun in Shorts: “ILY, BYE” and “Stories from My Gay Grandparents, episode 1”
• Homegrown Shorts: “After All” and “Saturn Risin9”✼
• Across Time & Space: Queer Black Stories: “Saturn Risin9”✼
• Queer Places, Spaces, & Shorts: “Trans Heaven, Pennsylvania”
• Rise Up: Doc Shorts: “Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr”
• Wild Combination: “MASC4MASC”✼

✼ The short “Saturn Risin9” is part of both the “Homegrown Shorts” and the “Across Time & Space: Queer Black Stories” programs.
✻ The short “MASC4MASC” also screens in-person before the feature film Riley.

Underground Orange (Bajo Naranja)

Underground Orange (Bajo Naranja), dir. Michael Taylor Jackson, 2024 Argentina/USA, 85 min., mostly in Argentine Spanish with English subtitles, but substantial parts in English without subtitles 👏

Saturday, June 22, 2024, 6:00 PM, Vogue Theatre

Digital Screening Room streaming encore

Underground Orange
(Bajo Naranja)

The basic setup of the film: a backpacker from Monterey, California, gets robbed on his first day in Buenos Aires, losing his money, his passport, his drivers license, and his phone. He makes his way to the U.S. embassy, where they tell him to come back Tuesday. After a rough night, he connects with a group of local activist/anarchists who are putting on a play, a mock trial of Henry Kissinger for his crimes against Argentina. He is dubbed “Yankee” (in Argentinian Spanish, pronounced more like “shankee”), and spends several days along for the ride on their adventures. They explore philosophical questions, engage in polyamorous free love, and take radical action, of which the play is just the beginning.

A couple of other quick notes: in the opening credits, there is a “blink and you miss it” display of a manifesto for the group Bajo Naranja. Don’t worry, though, you can read it on the official website (link below). Also, the director plays the part of Yankee.

The feel of the film wanders from concrete reality to trippy surreality, but it doesn’t wander aimlessly. The “genre fluid” tapestry of styles and moods carries the film along to a psychedelic conclusion that felt a bit like John Greyson’s masterpiece Lilies (1996), calling into question the blurry line between reality and dreams. For the audience, the ride is mostly light, with some deft humor, but also at times thought-provoking. All in all, an impressive debut feature, highly recommended.

• IMDb • Official website [es-ar] • Filmmaker • Instagram: @BajoNaranja • preview • other •

The Herricanes

The Herricanes, dir. Olivia Kuan, 2023 USA, 87 min. 💖

Friday, June 21, 2024, 3:30 PM, Roxie Theatre

Digital Screening Room streaming encore

The Herricanes

A little bit of pro 🏈 football trivia for you: What team has the longest winning streak in U.S. pro football history? (Hint: it’s not the San Francisco 49ers or the Dallas Cowboys or the New England Patriots.) (answer below)

In the late 1970s, there were more than a dozen professional women’s full-tackle American football teams in the United States, in what became the National Women’s Football League. Title IX, mandating equity between male and female students in any school receiving federal education funding, passed in 1972, but was mostly not yet put into practice in athletics. One of the teams was the Houston Herricanes.

Frameline48 begins: Film Queen Picks

It’s Juneteenth, which means it’s time for a block party on Castro Street, wrapping up with an outdoor screening of Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero 💖

It’s also time to start making your list and checking it twice of which films you plan to see in person and which you want to stream in the Digital Screening Room. To aid you in that process, I’ve posted my reviews of over two dozen of the programs (including all but one of the shorts programs), and I will continue posting reviews as I watch more screeners in between dashing to the theaters for in-person screenings. Check back here through the week for updates.

Here are a few of my favorites so far:

Queen of My Dreams

The Queen of My Dreams, dir. Fawzia Mirza, 2023 Canada/Pakistan, 97 min. 💖

in English with no subtitles and Urdu with English subtitles

Saturday, June 22, 2024, 8:30 PM, Palace of Fine Arts

Digital Screening Room streaming (within California only)

The Queen of My Dreams
Azra & Mariam, present day

First a couple of bits of housekeeping. The film is subtitled in Urdu as “دا قُین آف مای ڈریمز”; I struggled to find a translation, but finally figured out that it’s actually just the title in English but written in Urdu phonetics.

Now the basic setup of the story (no spoilers). The Queen of My Dreams is an intergenerational family drama, most of it taking place in Karachi, Pakistan in 1969, in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in 1989, and in Karachi in the present, at Azra’s father’s funeral. The grandmother is Amira, the mother Mariam, and the queer daughter Canadian-born Azra.

We see how Amira and Mariam handle Mariam’s marriage and move to Canada, how Mariam tries to shape the 12-year-old Azra into a good Muslim girl, and finally Mariam’s resistance to Azra’s attempts to chart the course of her own life. The story is semi-autobiographical, and by the way, Sharmila Tagore is still a real-life Bollywood actress, thanked in the credits. With the flashbacks, we see clearly the trauma passing from Amira to Mariam to Azra. It’s a powerful and compelling drama, definitely a MUST SEE for everyone, even if you can’t find Pakistan on a map.

Fawzia Mirza’s previous short “The Syed Family Xmas Eve Game Night”😒 (Frameline46) didn’t impress me much, but her first feature is top-notch.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram • Facebook • teaser trailer • trailer • Wikipedia • Rotten Tomatoes: 88% •

Λεσβία (Lesvia)

Λεσβία (Lesvia), also known as Lesvia: The Herstory of Eressos, dir. Tzeli Hadjidimitriou, 2024 Greece, 77 min., in Greek with subtitles 👏

Saturday, June 22, 2024, 1:00 PM, Roxie + streaming

Λεσβία (Lesvia)

The ancient Greek poet Σαπφώ (Sappho, which is pronounced “sap-FO,” not “saffo”) lived in the town of Ερεσός (Eresos) on the island of Λέσβος (usually romanized as Lesbos, but pronounced “LEZ-vos”). Of course, that last bit is where the term “lesbian” comes from, although in local usage, it just means someone from the island of Lesvos, the third-largest island in Greece and the eighth-largest in the Mediterranean. Lesvos is located within sight of the Turkish mainland, on the east side of the Aegean Sea, with Eresos on the far side of the island, looking out over the sea.

In the 1970s, women who love women began going in increasing numbers to Lesvos for vacation. The locals were at first surprised, then wary, finally reaching an uneasy accommodation with the tourists as more lesbians became Lesvians. Several businesses, including not one but two women-only hotels, flourished over the years, but in the 21st century, the flow of lesbian tourists slowed as more options became available for liberated vacations. Many of the lesbian businesses closed in the 2010s, but in the 2020s, there seems to be a bit of a resurgence.

This documentary tracks the rise and fall and possible revival of lesbian Lesvos. It’s a worthy addition to the history of a crucial period of LGBTQ+ history. Highly recommended.

Note: the film contains extensive nudity, mostly in the context of a nude beach, no more prurient than the film still shown here, but for that reason, the YouTube preview is age-restricted.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram • Facebook 

• preview: Vimeo / YouTube [longer, but also 🔞] •

Wild Combination streaming shorts

“Wild Combination” streaming shorts program

(shorts that screened in the festival before feature-length films)

Digital Screening Room only

• Dream Burger, dir. Sami Kali, 2024 Switzerland/UK, 9 min. 👏
  (screened with Throuple, Thursday, June 27, 2024, 3:30 PM, Roxie)
• Goodbye Tango, dir. Jason Laurits, 2023 USA, 14 min. 👍
  (screened with Turtles, Saturday, June 22, 2024, 8:30 PM, Roxie)
• Like You, dir. Harrison Sheehan, 2024 USA, 16 min. 👍 World Premiere
  (screened with Fallen Fruit, Wednesday, June 26, 2024, 6:00 PM, Vogue Theatre)
• MASC4MASC, dir. Felix Greisinger, 2024 Sweden, 9 min., in Swedish with English subtitles 👏
  North American premiere
  (screened with Riley, Thursday, June 27, 2024, 6:00 PM, Vogue Theatre)
• My Best Friend, dir. Elina Street, 2024 USA/France, 18 min., in English and French 👏
  (screened with Rent Free, Sunday, June 23, 2024, 3:30 PM, Roxie)
• Threshold, dir. Gregory Brecher, 2024 USA, 17 min. 👏 World Premiere
  (screened with Helen and the Bear, Sunday, June 23, 2024, 2:15 PM, Vogue Theatre)

Rise Up: Doc Shorts (2024)

“Rise Up: Doc Shorts” 2024 shorts program

Saturday, June 29, 2024, 3:30 PM, Roxie plus streaming

⚠️ content advisory: The Device contains a brief scene of erotic nudity

• Alok (➳ also screening in “Alok & There Are Things to Do”), dir. Alex Hedison, 2024 USA, 19 min. 👏
• The Callers, dir. Lindsey Dryden, 2024 UK/USA, 20 min. 👏
• The Device that Turned Me into a Cyborg was Born the Same Year I was, dir. Chella Man, 2023 USA, 3 min., in 🤟American Sign Language with English subtitles, ⚠️ 💖
• Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr, dir. Kimberly Reed, 2024 USA, 14 min. 💖
  🏆 Frameline48 Jury Award: Outstanding Documentary Short
• There Are Things to Do (➳ also screening in “Alok & There Are Things to Do”), dir. Mike Syeres, 2023 USA, 18 min. 👏
• Volver, dir. Borja Labrondo & Diego Sánchez, 2023 Spain, 17 min., in Spanish and English, US premiere 👍
• Wouldn’t Make It Any Other Way, dir. Hao Zhou, 2024, USA, 20 min. 👍
  🏆 Frameline48 Jury Award: honorable mention, Outstanding Documentary Short

➳ Two of these shorts, Alok and There Are Things to Do, will also screen as a duo, “Alok & There Are Things to Do,” at a special showing on Friday, June 28, 2024, at 2:00 PM at The Strand at the American Conservatory Theater, 1127 Market St, (@ 7th St.), 3-minute walk from Civic Center BART/Muni

Queer Places, Spaces, & Shorts (shorts program)

“Queer Places, Spaces, and Shorts” (2024 shorts program)

Monday, June 24, 2024, 9:00 PM, The Stud (already at Rush: see note)

Wednesday, June 26, 2024, 1:00 PM, Roxie

plus Digital Screening Room streaming encore (except Mother)

• Mother, dir. Meg Shutzer & Brandon Yadegari Moreno, 2024 USA, 23 min. 💖 (also screens in the “Homegrown Shorts” program) [not included in the streaming program]
• One Night at Babes, dir. Angelo Madsen Minax, 2024 USA, 29 min. 👏
• Stud Country, dir. Lina Abascal & Alexandra Kern, 2024 USA, 11 min. 👏
• Trans Heaven, Pennsylvania, dir. Hansen Bursic, 2024 USA, 12 min. World Premiere 💖
• Vollúpya, dir. Éri Sarmet & Jocimar Dias, Jr., 2024 Brazil, 21 min., in Portuguese with English subtitles, World Premiere 👍

If a program you want to see is shown in the Frameline guide as “at rush,” do not despair. Just show up early and look for the Rush Line. There are always some seats that were reserved that are released just before the show begins.

Cruel Summer streaming shorts

“Cruel Summer” streaming shorts program

🔞 content advisory: three of the films contain sexually explicit material

Digital Screening Room only (each short also screens in person before a feature film)

• Beach Logs Kill, dir. Haley Z. Boston, 2024 USA, 9 min. 🫤
  (screens with Carnage for Christmas, Saturday, June 22, 2024, 8:30 PM, New Parkway)
• 🔞 Bold Eagle, dir. Whammy Alcazaren, 2022 Philippines, 16 min., in Tagalog, Filipino and English 👎
  (screens with That Boy, Wednesday, June 26, 2024, 9:45 PM, Roxie • World Premiere)
• 🔞 Pepino/Faca (Cucumber/Knife), dir. Gustavo Vinagre, 2024 Brazil, 16 min., in English, Portuguese, German, French and Spanish ☹️
  (screens with That Boy, Wednesday, June 26, 2024, 9:45 PM Roxie • World Premiere)
• 🔞 Du Bist so Wunderbar (Paradise Europe), dir. Leandro Goddinho & Paulo Menezes, 2023 Germany/Brazil, 17 min., in Portuguese, English, and German 👎
  🏆 Frameline48 Jury Award: Outstanding Narrative Short
  (screens with Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers, Thursday, June 27, 2024, 8:15 PM, Roxie)
• RAT!, dir. Neal Mulani, 2024 USA, 17 min. 🙂
  (screens with Haze, Friday, June 28, 2024, 8:30 PM, Roxie)
• Stink, dir. Matias Breuer, 2024 USA, 11 min. 💩
  (screens with “Fangs After Dark” shorts program, Friday, June 21, 2024, 8:30 PM, Roxie • World Premiere)