Barbie Blues

Two children, Ignacio and Enrique, know love, the movies and fear in a religious school at the beginning of the 1960s. Father Manolo, director of the school and its professor of literature, is witness to and part of these discoveries. The three are followed through the next few decades, their reunion marking life and death.

The films spans two decades as the story unfolds in a series of flashbacks that begin when Qiyue and Ansheng were just thirteen. The two became inseparable until they met a boy who ended up tearing their lives apart.

When a boy becomes a young man, the way he sees the world can change not just his perceptions of those around him, but how others see him. As burgeoning desires come to the surface, there is the choice of either embracing and acting upon them, or burying them. Includes: On the Roof [En la azotea] (2015); The Son [El hijo] (2012); Inside [Dentro] (2013); Tomboy [Même pas mort] (2007); Paradigma (2016).

A gritty story taking place in Stockholm, about the passionate love between the self-abusive Sebastian who wants to be a woman, and the easy-going Andreas who is certainly not gay.

Silvester Home Run

21st Century Girl is an omnibus feature that is of the girls, by the girls and for the girls. The work of 15 women directors under the age of 30, each of whom contributed an 8-minute film, the package highlights a range of genres, visions and thematic concerns.

Eternal daydreamer Mel can't wait to quit her sucky catering job and fly to her dream destination: Portugal. Things change when the beautiful Jenny literally crashes into her life when Mel nearly runs her over in her classic BMW. It is love at first sight, however there is just one problem: Jenny mistakenly assumes Mel to be a boy. Despite this, the pair become boyfriend and girlfriend. With Mel attempting to disguise her true gender at every turn, her journey from tomboy to out lesbian is fraught with life-defining dilemmas and sweet surprises.

In 1970s Germany, Léopold, a 50-year-old businessman, picks up and seduces 20-year-old Franz, who swiftly moves into his apartment. The dynamic between them intensifies with the sudden arrival of their ex-girlfriends.

One day at work, unsuccessful puppeteer Craig finds a portal into the head of actor John Malkovich. The portal soon becomes a passion for anybody who enters its mad and controlling world of overtaking another human body.

The heterosexual man Axel is thrown out of his girlfriends home for cheating and ends up moving in with a gay man. Axel learns the advantages of living with gay men even though they are attracted to him and when his girlfriend wants him back he must make a tough decision.

Camilo, an adolescent rower on a Xochimilco jetty, has his first sexual encounter with another man. One day he thinks he is being discovered by Beto, a colleague from work. When confronted, Camilo accidentally ends up revealing his homosexuality. Not knowing what to do, Camilo reacts violently and decides to flee Xochimilco.

Tobi and Achim, the pride of the local crew club, have been the best of friends for years and are convinced that nothing will ever stand in the way of their friendship. They look forward to the upcoming summer camp and the crew competition. Then the gay team from Berlin arrives and Tobi is totally confused. The evening before the races begin, the storm that breaks out is more than meteor-logical.

The film follows an emotionally harrowing journey endured by young gay photographer Alex, after he is diagnosed with peritoneal cancer. Abandoned by his brother and his on-again, off-again lover, Alex is forced to face his mortality and the loss of his sexual identity through sheer resilience. A devastating, but ultimately hopeful story of survival and resolve.

Santa, a peasant woman loyal to the Revolution, is sent to guard Andrés, a gay writer who is under house arrest, considered “ untrustworthy” for his ideas and sexuality by the Cuban authorities. Set in a small village in eastern Cuba during the early 1980s, this poignant political drama depicts an encounter between two deeply thoughtful souls on opposite sides of a profound cultural divide. Both have experienced deep loss, and both know the damaging effects of isolation and oppression. Even so, the cavernous ideological divide separating them — the same one that has separated Cuban friends and kin for over 50 years — has until now seemed insurmountable.

A young woman discovers she was submitted to several surgeries to correct her intersexual body as a baby. She has to find her own self outside gender binaries.

A teenage girl is ready to experiment, but an older man’s demands burden her sexual awakening with complex realizations about her place in the world.

In the early 1960s, during the Vatican II era, a young woman training to become a nun struggles with issues of faith, sexuality and the changing church.

When a Hong Kong teenager from a poor family wins a trip to Japan, he unleashes a chain of events that will soon bring him from his secluded fishing village to Tokyo. On the way, he connects with a barely competent tour guide and a gender-fluid pickpocket. Upon returning home with this merry band of schemers, he and his family of counterfeiters discover that a multinational conglomerate led by a ruthless Japanese developer has found the village, and is determined to raze it to build the new center of world trade.

It's 1986, tormented teenager Henry is struggling with his sexuality and abusive home life. Henry sits in his closet contemplating suicide. In a flash of light he is transported to 2016 where he meets teenager Ben — now occupying his room 30 years later.

Separated from his family in the Dutch countryside, young boy Jeroen crosses paths with Walt, a Canadian soldier who takes him under his care.