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Director: Jeffrey Schwarz
The incredible story of Gloria Swanson’s wish to turn *Sunset Boulevard* into a musical truly proves that life does indeed imitate art. She hired struggling songwriters Richard Stapley and Dickson Hughes – who happened to be in a relationship – but everything derailed when she fell in love with one of them. Featuring rare archive footage of its subjects, alongside interviews with those who knew them, Schwarz journeys from the dark alleys of LA to the decadence of Palm Springs and the elite world of Broadway.
Director: Park Kin-young
Jin-Woo lives a deliberately quiet life in rural Korea, working as a shepherd and looking after his young niece Seol. Though Seol is approaching school age, Jin-Woo keeps their contact with the outside world to a minimum, save for the family that employs him. But everything changes when his college boyfriend Hyeon- min and estranged sister Eun-yeong Jin-Woo visit him.
Director: Claire Simon
A taped confession is the starting point for exploring the unusually intense bond that developed between Marguerite Duras and her besotted fan Yann Andréa. Andréa reveals how an obsession with Marguerite Duras, the widely admired French writer, filmmaker and intellectual, led them to become a couple. Claire Simon’s jewel of a film’s is based on an interview he gave to journalist Michèle Manceaux.
Director: Peter McDowell
Director Peter McDowell was just five years old when his brother Jimmy, a Vietnam veteran, died in Saigon at the age of 24. In the decades that followed Jimmy’s tragic passing, his name was rarely mentioned by his grief-stricken family, nor was his cause of death ever truly determined. Frustrated by the secrecy – and possible shame – of his parents and desperate to uncover the mysteries surrounding both Jimmy’s life and his death, Peter ventures on a quest for the truth in an effort to finally get to know the brother he barely remembers.
Director: Robin Hunzinger
After the death of his grandmother Emma, Hunzinger discovered a collection of letters from an enigmatic sender named Marcelle. Through the letters it transpires that Emma and Marcelle were schoolgirl sweethearts in the 1920s. After parting ways, Marcelle succumbs to tuberculosis and is admitted to a sanatorium. However it’s here that she forms a rebellious gang of kindred spirits – who become confidantes and lovers – dubbing themselves the ‘Blood-Spitters Gang’. Weaving together Marcelle’s letters with archive footage, photographs and scenes from classic films such as *Mädchen in Uniform*, Hunzinger thrillingly brings to life this extraordinary true story.
Director: Lyle Kash
X is a key member of the Lavender League, a bowling squad for older lesbians who meet weekly to share their lives, grieve for lost members and score some strikes. When Susan, the leader of the group, passes away with a surreal level of autonomy and grace, the bureaucracy and strangeness of death leads X to meet her estranged son Alex.
Director: Savannah Knoop
In a grubby corner of New York, a clueless writer consults the candid genius of a non-binary Gen Z hacker.
Directors: Philipp Fussenegger and Dino Osmanović
Her extraordinary transformation from overweight mother-of-three to disciplined athlete and dominatrix speaks volumes about the relationship between gender and race, not least because Tischa is neither trans nor queer. Yet everything about her experience is a pointed commentary on how transphobia, racism and gendered violence are intimately linked.
Director: Adrián Silvestre
Six transgender women from different walks of life get to know each other at a rural Spanish retreat. The participants in this cinema verité-style documentary met at a support network for trans women, to share health information and experiences of vaginoplasty. Brought together by that single surgical subject, their discussions expand broadly as the women unfurl their radically different life stories.
Director: Bobbi Jo Hart
Formed in 1969 by Californian siblings June and Jean Millington, Fanny were one of the first all-female bands to release an album in the US. David Bowie said they were as important as The Beatles. Comprising women of colour, and lesbians to boot, there are no prizes for guessing their fate. Overlooked despite their originality and musical skills, they quit in 1975 largely to become producers and session musicians. Bowie urged for the band to be ‘revivified’. And now they are finally back, reunited in their seventies with a new record deal.
Director: Chase Joynt
The eponymous Agnes is well known for participating in a UCLA gender health study and revealing how she used the medical system to gain access to surgery. This film not only explores her story, it reimagines the inner lives of eight other trans participants, whose frank insights on race, class and politics are deeply prescient.
Director: Victoria Linares
Oscar Torres is known as one of the earliest Dominican filmmakers who, during the vicious dictatorship of Trujillo, fled to Cuba to make powerful socialist films. So why has Victoria Linares only just discovered that she’s related to him and why does Torres appear so absent from the family’s archive? As she investigates the life of her cousin, she’s dismayed to learn that every trace of him has been removed from family records. Using home movies, extracts from Oscar’s films, the re-staging of his un-filmed work and creatively recreated conversations with those who knew him, Victoria pieces together the extraordinary life of a queer filmmaker, and begins to re-evaluate her own past and place in her family.
Director: Leigh Brooks
Emerging from the New York hardcore scene in the late 1980s, Life of Agony was formed by three disaffected teens, each yearning to escape their volatile home lives. With a steady rise in notoriety since their humble beginnings, by the mid-90s the band looked set for breakthrough success. But in 1997, after the release of their third album, singer Mina Caputo unexpectedly quit, her bandmates unaware of the personal struggles she was facing.