gen_ [note the underscore at the end] 💖, documentary, dir. Gianluca Matarrese, 2025,
France/Italy/Switzerland, 104 min., in Italian and English with English subtitles (note: you must manually turn on the subtitles)
Monday, June 23, 2025, 3:30 pm, Roxie Theater
also available in the Digital Screening Room, June 23 to 30, 2025
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| gen_: Dr. Maurizio Bini |
Trans Memoria 💖, dir. Victoria Verseau, 2024, Sweden/France, 72 min., in Swedish, French, and English, with full English subtitles throughout
Wednesday, June 25, 2025, 4:30 pm, Roxie Theater
available in the Digital Screening Room, June 23 to 30, 2025
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| Trans Memoria |
A Deeper Love: The Story of Miss Peppermint 💖, dir. Oriel Pe’er, 2025, USA, 86 min.
Thursday, June 26, 2026, 8:30 pm, Herbst Theatre
🌐 World premiere
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Deeper Love: The Story of Miss Peppermint |
I’m Your Venus 💖,
dir. Kimberly Reed, 2024, USA, 85 min.
Sunday, June 22, 2025, 6:00 pm, Roxie Theater
🏆 winner: 2025 Frameline Best Documentary Feature jury award
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I’m Your Venus Venus Xtravaganza’s two families meet |
Thesis on a Domestication (Tesis sobre una domesticación)
💩🙄🥱👎,
dir. Javier van de Couter, 2024, Argentina/Mexico, 113 min.,
in Spanish with English subtitles
Saturday, June 21, 2025, 8:30 pm, Roxie Theater
⚠️ content advisory: transphobia, explicit sex
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Thesis on a Domestication (Tesis sobre una domesticación) |
The Nature of Invisible Things (A natureza das coisas invisíveis) 💖, dir. Rafeala Camelo, 2025, Brazil/Chile, 90 min., in Portuguese with subtitles
Friday, June 20, 2025, 3:30 pm, Roxie Theater
🏳️🌈 Queer premiere
🏆 winner: 2025 Frameline Best First Narrative Feature jury award
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The Nature of Invisible Things (A natureza das coisas invisíveis) |
Really Happy Someday 💖, dir. J. Stevens, 2024, Canada, 90 min.
Sunday, June 22, 2025, 1:00 pm, Vogue Theatre, 🇺🇸 US Premiere
(screens with the short Tessitura, reviewed separately)
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| Really Happy Someday |
Tessitura 👏, dir. Lydia Cornett & Brit Fryer, 2025, USA, 18 min.
Sunday, June 22, 2025, 1:00 pm, Vogue Theatre
(screens before the feature film Really Happy Someday)
🏆 winner: 2025 Frameline Best Documentary Short jury award
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| Tessitura |
“We’re Here, We’re Queer” (shorts program)
Closing Night Screening
Sunday, June 15, 2025, 7:00 pm, Presidio Theater, 99 Moraga Ave., SF
⚠️ content advisories: (see individual listings below)
(This program is a mix of short documentaries, narrative shorts, and other works.)
“Liberatory Black Futures” (shorts program)
Friday, June 13, 2025, 7:00 pm Presidio Theater, 99 Moraga Ave., SF
⚠️ content advisories: (see individual listings below)
Dreams in Nightmares 💖,
dir. Shatara Michelle Ford, 2024, USA/Taiwan/UK, 128 min.
Saturday, June 21, 2025, 8:30 pm, New Parkway (Oakland)
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| 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.
Heightened Scrutiny 💖, dir. Sam Feder, 2025, USA, 85 min.
Thursday, June 20, 2025, 7:00pm ACT Toni Rembe Theater
also available in the Digital Screening Room (within California only)
Update: on June 18, the Supreme Court 🤬 upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors in the Skrmetti case.
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| 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 •
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
and in the “Queer Quartet Streaming Shorts” program in the Digital Screening Room
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| Mahu |
“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 • Mahu: A Trans-Pacific Love Letter
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.
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| Niñxs |
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] •
The in-person screenings for the SFTFF were last week, November 13 – 16, and the online streaming is available this week, November 18 – 24. Here are my thoughts on the first six programs.
(You’re on your own for Program #7, the “adult” 🔞 shorts.)
“Mélange of Shorts” shorts program
Friday, November 15, 2024, 9:00 pm, Roxie Theater
and streaming online Nov. 18 – 24
“International” (shorts program)
Friday, November 15, 2024, 7:00 pm, Roxie Theater
and streaming online Nov. 18 – 24
