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Dali (Christian Bables) is a slender young thing with flamingo pink hair who wears loud shirts, speaks using the upper part of his vocal range and swings his hips when he walks. He’s a fashion designer and make-up artist who lives as part of a big queer family with a doting house mother who refers to him as anakshie (‘daughter’). Imagine their surprise when he comes out – as straight.

A lively comedy from writer-director team Fatrick Tabada and Perci M Intalan, who previously worked together on 2019’s Born Beautiful, this is in one part a sidelong take on the experience of a more conventional coming out, and another part celebration of the options out there beyond conventional straight masculinity. Although it touches on some dark subjects, including the way that masculinity is often reinforced through violence, it’s ultimately a joyous, life-affirming film. Neither its silliness nor its occasionally barbed wit.

Now in its fourth year, Queer East will return to cinema screens across the capital and around the UK in 2023 with another exciting line-up which mixes contemporary feature film and documentary with retrospective screenings, short films, artists’ moving image works, a VR cinematic experience and dance productions that explore a diverse range of topical LGBTQ+ issues. Through an incredible programme of cinema and performance art the festival will push boundaries and challenge expectations and labels commonly associated with queer communities. Queer East’s vital programme is sure to provoke, inspire and engage.

Consisting of a main festival which will take from 18 to 30 April 2023 across eight venues in London, and a nationwide tour planned from September to November across ten cities, Queer East 2023 features 50 films incorporating work from 17 countries across East and Southeast Asia and beyond.

New additions to this year’s festival include Focus Korea which consists of 15 titles spanning...

Stars: Eva Green, Mark Strong, Billie Gadsdon, Chai Fonacier | Written by Garret Shanley | Directed by Lorcan Finnegan

Christine is a successful fashion designer. She lives with her marketing consultant husband Felix and their daughter Roberta in a huge house in the middle of Dublin. As Nocebo opens they’re out in front of that house with their expensive cars deciding who’s going to pick Roberta up from her private school. Life, as they say, has been good to her.

However, that’s about to change. At the showing of her latest designs, she steps away to take a call and a mangy-looking dog appears from nowhere to shower her with ticks before vanishing just as suddenly. Apparently as a result of a bite from one of those ticks she contracts a mysterious disease that leaves her sick, weak and suffering from memory lapses. Several months into her illness, Diana...

The Lgbtq+ voices get louder in Asian cinemas too. Generally, outside specific genres like sex comedies or erotic pictures, sex is rarely approached as a serious issue, unless you really look for it. Here are 5 films of 2019 that have broken the taboo and even taboo within the taboo and have discussed sex, sexual identity or orientation openly. Of course, we still swim in the not-exactly-mainstream waters, but the below listed five films hit several jackpots with bravado. And they are fabulous alternatives for the Valentine Days flick. Well, except for “Kalel, 15”, perhaps. But with the person queer in a fitting way…

The films are alphabetically ordered.

1. Born Beautiful (2019) by Perci Intalan

“Born Beautiful” is a sequel, or rather spin-off, of fabulous “Die Beautiful” (2016) by Jun Robles Lana. Now, the spotlight lights on Trisha’s (Paolo Ballesteros) Bff Barbs (Martin del Rosario) and her identity crises. Bearing the traces of Lana’s writing,...

This the third year that the Slovak Queer Film Festival introduces a sidebar section focusing on Far East cinemas Queer Asia. In its 13th edition, the festival brings a retrospective dedicated to the Philippines.

It is the diversity of the stories that caught the attention of the festival. Moreover, the Philippine Lgbtq+ films stretch across the spectrum from arthouse to mainstream. This also applies to the 3rd Queer Asia section. Consisting of five features, it presents a sample from the last decennial.

Among them, “Boy” (2009) by Auraeus Solito is the oldest. A macho dancer film in its best, it plays out a story of a search for joy and fulfillment in a relationship with a hired erotic dancer. Subtle in its execution, strong in its character, “Boy” unashamedly exposes the male body to the gaze. “Those Long Haired Nights” (2017) by Gerardo Calagui heads out from the night clubs and interiors of homes.