Why We Need Pride

A documentary that explores the conflicts between the fear of family repression and the desire for social change by telling the story of the director who, at the age of 18, creates an LGBTQUIA+ struggle movement without his parents knowing.

MORENA tells the uplifting story of the Philippine National Surf Athlete Ikit Agudo, who overcame the pressure to blend into a society obsessed with skin whitening. Within the ocean, she found happiness, strength, and pride in her roots. Inspiring young girls around the world to embrace who they truly are. In the Philippines, skin-whitening remains a billion-peso industry, a legacy of colonial beauty ideals that for generations have led many to neglect their true identity and natural beauty.

Yayoi Kusama born March 22, 1929 is a Japanese artist and writer. Throughout her career she has worked in a wide variety of media, including painting, collage, scat sculpture, performance art, and environmental installations, most of which exhibit her thematic interest in psychedelic colors, repetition and pattern. A precursor of the pop art, minimalist and feminist art movements, Kusama influenced contemporaries such as Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and Yoko Ono.

Following the lives of Queer creatives behind Norwich’s queer collaborative ‘Stripped Sets’. We discover the reasoning behind the need for safe spaces, and the stories that come with them. Through live events, photoshoots and history, we see the process in creating such an important event.

Over the course of a year, film follows Vancouver Pride Society president Ken Coolen to various international Pride events, including Poland, Hungary, Russia, Sri Lanka and others where there is great opposition to pride parades. In North America, Pride is complicated by commercialization and a sense that the festivals are turning away from their political roots toward tourism, party promotion and entertainment. Christie documents the ways larger, more mainstream Pride events have supported the global Pride movement and how human rights components are being added to more established events. In the New York sequence, leaders organize an alternative Pride parade, the Drag March, set up to protest the corporatization of New York Pride. A parade in São Paulo, the world's largest Pride festival, itself includes a completely empty float, meant to symbolize all those lost to HIV and to anti-gay violence.

Three spoken word poets and event organizers based in Dublin - Melissa Ridge, Hazel Hogan and Kasey Shelley - reveal the positive impact poetry has had on their lives, and the challenges they have turning their hobby into a career.

Award winning documentary by Joslyn Rose Lyons exploring the relationship between spiritual connection and the creative process in hip-hop music.

A short film by Albert Watson from 1997 starring Henry Rollins as himself, doing his spoken word bit "I Know You" from the album The Boxed Life.

When is the moment you think: I'm going to hoist my regional flag? Who are these flaghoisters? And what does it mean to identify with your region? These are questions that filmmaker Okki Poortvliet, theatermaker Hans van der Werf and designer Vera Vos asked. So, they went through the whole of Drenthe, a region in the North of The Netherlands where all three of them grew up, to collect as many stories as possible from hoisters of the flag of Drenthe. The Flaghoisters is a film about the confrontation between the countryside and, as people from Drenthe call it, “the city dwellers”. A story about a disappearing language, the safety of your village, greeting each other, being proud, and just acting "normal".

A group of individuals who came out as LGBTQ+ later in life reflect on the emotional and often complicated paths that led them to finally embrace their true identities. After years of living in secrecy—some as long as decades—they share personal stories of internal conflict, family tension, and the courage it took to step into the light. From a nonagenarian to a former priest and a military veteran, each narrative reveals the unique challenges of coming out in midlife, while celebrating the profound freedom and self-acceptance that can emerge at any age.

World-renowned Drag Queen Miz Cracker helps a Texas family that’s experiencing strange occurrences after renovating their 1892 home. As a lover of the paranormal, can Miz Cracker solve their ghost problem and help them coexist peacefully with the spirits?

Family comes in many shapes and sizes. And this family are bound by the urge to make change. This film follows individuals from an international order of queer nuns as they live their lives, just a little larger than most. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence stand proudly across the globe as a beacon of self-acceptance and self-expression, but not everyone agrees with their message. The judgement they face may be challenging but their intentions are clear: to spread joy, end stigmatic guilt and do it all in a habit.

A powerful documentary that follows gay Namibian activist Friedel Dausab as he challenges his country’s criminalisation of same-sex love. In June 2022, Friedel files a landmark lawsuit against the government, becoming a beacon of hope for LGBTQIA+ Namibians seeking safety and equality. Facing death threats, public hostility, and immense personal risk, he takes his fight to court while awaiting judgment. The film also traces the colonial roots of queer criminalisation—from Tudor England to its export across the Global South through empire and later reinforced by Christian evangelism. Alongside fellow activists from Sri Lanka and Barbados, Friedel travels to London, where history, protest, and Pride converge. Blending legal battle with historical insight, the documentary is both an urgent exposé of injustice and a stirring celebration of queer resilience, courage, and resistance.

Footage from the first ever São Paulo LGBTQ Pride Parade, which took place on the 28th of June 1997 on Avenida Paulista. The annual event would go on to become the largest pride parade in the world.

Are You Proud? is a vivid and engaged docu-celebration of the LGBT rights movement from the partial victory of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act to Stonewall, the Gay Liberation Front , the AIDS crisis, Legal Marriage and finally the 2016 Pulse night club shooting. The film gives an extensive history of the course of LGBT rights campaigning, but it also shows how much more work there is to be done.

In the spotlight of global media coverage, the first transgender woman ever to perform as Don Giovanni in a professional opera, makes her historic debut in one of the reddest states in the U.S.

A short documentary immersing you in the intimacy and harsh reality of young LGBTQ+ artists, working in Los Angeles in the midst of the glamorous neighborhood of West Hollywood.

Chenevelles, population just over 400. A grocery store-bar-service station. Its church and château. A village lost in New Aquitaine. Nothing to distinguish it from neighboring towns. Until the day when a few posters, community social networks and local newspapers invited the surrounding area to participate in the first rural Pride - on July 22, 2022! The region's LGBTQIA+ community, along with Cyril, the mayor, and his constituents, got together to ensure that this celebration resonated throughout the country. The grocer, Léo, a young man in transition, and the Poitiers-based Coloc Drag collective all had the same goal: to surpass 1,000 participants to spread the word that the countryside has broken free from prejudice and celebrate tolerance. 

A queer photographer documents nightlife, drag culture, and chosen family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, revealing a thriving LGBTQ+ community and challenging assumptions about where queer joy can exist in small-town America. Winning 'Best Documentary' awards from Jim Thorpe Independent Film Festival, Red Rose Film Festival, and Appalachian Queer Film Festival, the short film serves as a proof-of-concept that's currently in the works.

The world of hip-hop lyrics has changed, simple rhyme schemes just don't cut it. Rhymes are put under a microscope, and there is no lyrical leeway for emerging artists. This gripping documentary tells the story of Jeff Walker.