2024 Melbourne Queer Film Festival – First Look

2024 MQFF Opening Night
Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story (2024)

Dir: Michael Mabbott, Lucah Rosenberg-Lee | Canada

MELBOURNE PREMIERE

Chances are you’ve never heard of singer Jackie Shane, a rising star in 1950s Nashville who became a sensation in ‘60s Toronto, with a huge hit single in Any Other Way (“Tell her that I’m happy / Tell her that I’m gay / Tell her I wouldn’t have it / Any other way”). However, Shane was to disappear mysteriously from public view for nigh-on 40 years.

From the producers of the Emmy Award-winning Hip-Hop Evolution (2016) and Executive Producer Elliot Page comes this stirring, Frameline “Out in the Silence Award”-winning documentary which shares the extraordinary story of a pioneering Black trans performer of exceptional talent and stage presence, who in no way hid her queerness and refused to be anyone but her authentic self. Sandra Caldwell – who recently shared her own remarkable, previously invisible trans herstory in Disclosure (2020) – and Makayla Couture give testimony to Shane’s inspirational significance and, beneath beautiful, painterly rotoscoping, embody her too, as we hear from Shane herself in never-before-heard phone conversations. We’re also treated to live recordings which leave no doubt that Jackie Shane was one of the greatest soul performers of the 20th century – period.

Centrepiece
Gondola (2023)

Dir: Veit Helmer | Germany, Georgia

MELBOURNE PREMIERE

Lesbian love language has never assumed quite such whimsically creative dimensions before as in Veit Helmer’s unutterably charming, Georgian-set Gondola – never mind that there’s nary a word spoken throughout the entire film! Iva and Nino are cable car attendants, each assigned to an orange cabin suspended high above the Caucasus Mountains, ever passing in opposite directions. Both have to fend off their ogre-like boss’s oafish overtures as they put their energies into devising ever more ingenious ways to advance their mid-air flirtations with one another.

While it mightn’t contain dialogue, in any conventional, verbal sense, Gondola nonetheless represents a gloriously cinematic fusion of sound and vision, melding an Amélie-like sensibility and stunning cinematography to winsome music from Malcolm Arison and Icelandic singer-songwriter Sóley. Nino Soselia and Mathilde Irrmann are note-perfect as the two cable-car attendants; their romantic airborne antics will give you all the lift you need too!

2024 MQFF Closing Night
Duino (2024)

Dir: Juan Pablo Di Pace, Andrés P. Estrada | USA, Argentina, Italy

AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE

Hunky Argentinian actor Juan Pablo Di Pace (MQFF 2023 highlight The Mattachine Family plus the so-camp-it’s-practically-gay movie musical Mamma Mia!) stars in this deeply affecting, semi-autobiographical film that also marks his directorial feature debut, alongside co-writer/director Andrés Pepe Estrada. Di Pace plays Matías, a filmmaker yearning for the unrequited love of Alexander (Oscar Morgan), the blazingly beautiful teen he fell head over heels for many years ago while studying at an international school on Italy’s luscious Adriatic Coast. Hoping to recapture Alexander’s spirit in his movies, Matías’ sunlit memories take us back to the past, with remarkable newcomer Santiago Madrussan memorably depicting him as a younger man. Can the secrets of the past unlock love in this dreamy dalliance that won a bunch of awards at Turin’s queer-focused Lovers Film Festival?

Close To You (2023)

Dir: Dominic Savage | Canada

MELBOURNE PREMIERE

Close To You is a heartfelt exploration of identity and belonging, following Sam, a trans man who returns to his hometown for his father’s birthday after years of distance. Confronting family dynamics, lost love and the emotional impact of his transition, the film goes beyond personal transformation, redefining the meaning of love and acceptance. Written and directed by Dominic Savage and starring Elliot Page in his first leading role as a trans man, Close To You draws from Page’s lived experience. As Sam reconnects with his family and an old flame, the film tenderly examines the complexities of coming home and embracing one’s true self. With themes of resilience, hope and understanding, Close To You courageously captures the unending journey of self-acceptance and love.

Lady Like (2024)

Dir: Luke Willis | USA, UK

AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE

The many-headed behemoth that is RuPaul’s Drag Race has launched a thousand careers (slight exaggeration) but thrown just as many folks overboard. British-born, US-based Lady Camden – AKA Rex Wheeler – a veteran of season 14, is one of the survivors. This intimate documentary, the feature debut of director Luke Willis, follows his journey from the Royal Ballet in London to embracing drag, getting drafted then dealing with the hullabaloo that followed his time on the show, tackling head-on the emotional aftermath of the notorious ‘villain edit’ and a profoundly personal tragedy. But above all it’s a curtain-pull back on what it truly takes to become an indomitable performer.

National Anthem (2023)

Dir: Luke Gilford | USA

MELBOURNE PREMIERE

Twenty-one year old Dylan (the excellent Charlie Plummer from Lean on Pete) lives an isolated life of routine in rural New Mexico, working odd construction jobs to help support his little brother and a somewhat absent mother. He accepts a gig working at House of Splendor, a queer ranch a little further out than normal. There he meets the luminous Sky (Eve Lindley) and a diverse group of queer folk who provide him with the space and freedom to explore parts of himself he hasn’t yet found. Premiering at SXSW 2023, the gorgeous debut feature film from photographer Luke Gilford – think Them’s Love Lies Bleeding photo series with Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian – expertly pairs himself with one-to-watch cinematographer Katelin Arizmendi to sprinkle no small amount of queer joy upon the rural Southwest, boosted by a swooning soundtrack featuring Perfume Genius and Devotchka’s Nick Urata.

Reas (2024)

Dir: Lola Arias | Argentina, Germany, Switzerland

AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE

One of the most magical movies to birth at this year’s Berlinale – where it was nominated for the Teddy Documentary award – Lola Arias’ form-fracturing marvel is magnificently queer in every way imaginable. This shimmering chameleon of a multicoloured docu-musical features former prisoners depicting not only versions of themselves, but also their jailers. Skipping gaily between the real and imagined, it happily breaks the fourth wall and pulls back the curtain to cheekily include bloopers, script-in-hand. Set in an artfully crumbling, shuttered prison in Buenos Aires that evokes their prolonged captivity in Caseros Prison, a remnant of the rolling military dictatorships of the ‘60s, it’s a surreally neon-hued stage on which this delightfully diverse array of cis women and trans people come together in a fabulous fever dream set to a disco beat replete with smooth Ballroom moves. Emancipation has rarely felt this astoundingly empowering.

The Visitor (2024)

Dir: Bruce LaBruce | UK

MELBOURNE PREMIERE

Arguably Canadian cinema’s most anarchic agent provocateur, The Misandrists director Bruce LaBruce has been blasting his punk art porn visions into the universe’s most chaotically-inclined cinemas (or grubby VHS players) since the ‘80s. Sometimes they don’t make it: L.A. Zombie was struck from the 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival by overzealous censors. Thankfully, his latest eye-popper snuck in the backdoor unassailed. A sacrilegious exhumation of the still-warm corpse of fellow queer button-pushing pioneer Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema (1968), this new crotch twist shifts the engorged drama from Italy to contemporary London, where Bishop Black’s eponymous Visitor emerges naked from a suitcase as a refugee who soon invites themselves into a filthy rich, binary-fucking family’s mansion, seducing them to the cause one-by-horny-one. This NSFW fury was up for the Teddy Best Feature Award at this year’s Berlinale.