Open Recess

Karim, 30, drives every night. One day at dawn, he drives his last client - a foreign artist, the same age than him. Karim feels irresistibly attracted towards this young man. What he feels will start questioning who he thought he was.

Steven Russell leads a seemingly average life – an organ player in the local church, happily married to Debbie, and a member of the local police force. That is until he has a severe car accident that leads him to the ultimate epiphany: he’s gay and he’s going to live life to the fullest – even if he has to break the law to do it. Taking on an extravagant lifestyle, Steven turns to cons and fraud to make ends meet and is eventually sent to the State Penitentiary where he meets the love of his life, a sensitive, soft-spoken man named Phillip Morris. His devotion to freeing Phillip from jail and building the perfect life together prompts him to attempt (and often succeed at) one impossible con after another.

Arnold Beckoff is looking for love and acceptance, but as a gay man working as a female impersonator in 1970s New York City, neither come easily. After a series of heartaches, Arnold believes he has found the love of his life in Alan, and the couple make plans to adopt. But when tragedy strikes, Arnold's life is shaken to its very core, leading to a confrontation with his overbearing mother, who has never approved of her son's lifestyle.

Documentary examining the 2014 shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke and the cover-up that ensued.

Violeta leads a normal life in a well-off family, with loving parents, surrounded by everything the heart of an eleven-year-old girl might wish for. But she hasn’t always been the pretty girl she is today; she was born a boy. At age 6, she baffled her parents (the famous adult movie stars Nacho Vidal and Franceska Jaimes) when she told them she wanted to be called and dress as a girl. After the initial shock, they decided to give her all their support on the long and tough road that will lead to her becoming a woman someday. Violeta faces many challenges, medical (such as deciding whether or not to take hormone-blockers to stop the development of masculine features as soon as puberty kicks in) and legal (obtaining an ID card with her new name and gender). Later, she may consider getting a sex reassignment procedure, or the possibility of becoming a mother through adoption.

Two former high school classmates return from a night of heavy partying. The closeness of their friendship long ago quickly metamorphoses into a present day battle between tenderness and desire. As the pair open their minds to each other, dawn sheds light on their anxieties, which soon evaporate under the sun's rays.

After 25 years, a former hired gun visits his old colleague, now a small-town sheriff. Their past relationship is explored, as is how they reflect on it in the present.

A young farmer in rural Yorkshire numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker.

A man's discovery of his own sexuality against all odds and finding himself in the process.

Nabi, a veteran fire officer, accepts the coming out from her child Hangyeol, “I want to remove my breasts.” Meanwhile, Vivian, a flight crew, receives a letter from her son Yejoon, “Mom, I’m gay.” Hangyeol and Yejoon confide in their struggles even before the two mothers understand their reality.

Finding community via his gay rugby league, Jamaican-born Desmond navigates life, love, and identity as an immigrant living in Munich, Germany.

At the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, sideshow barker Florenz Ziegfeld turns the tables on his more-successful neighbor Billings, and also steals his girlfriend. This pattern repeats throughout their lives, as Ziegfeld makes and loses many fortunes putting on ever-bigger, more spectacular shows

When Jade, a web-cam girl, visits Takeko's tattoo studio she becomes entranced with the image of the spider lily and with Takeko as well. In order to get closer to the object of her desire, Jade asks Takeko to give her the same lily tattoo, challenging Takeko's monastic existence and opening up memories which threaten to tear the two women apart.

A 14 year old boy excitedly prepares for his first dance, but when his date arrives he's faced with a split-second decision.

Gabriel Drolet-Maguire, a designer living in Montreal, takes us into their artistic world to discuss their HIV diagnosis. This is a timely and hopeful look at past and present day HIV/AIDS activism in Quebec.

An elderly woman at the end of her life reminisces her years spent at a boarding school for girls.

Ash and Max must question the future of their relationship when Max gets accepted into an East Coast graduate school program. On their final night together, they relive moments of their past before they're interrupted by a surprise going away party.

It is approaching an election in the UK when the leader of the Labour party, John Smith, suffers another in a line of heart attacks and dies. With the leadership campaign about to start the clear choice appears to be Gordon Brown, a stanch Scotsman. However Tony Blair is also beginning to appear more likely as he will appeal to Southern voters who would be turned off by Brown. Blair rings Brown to arrange a meeting to discuss which will go for the job. The film flashbacks to the start of their relationship, sharing an office in Westminster on their first seats.

As a sci-fi obsessed woman living in near isolation, Beverly Glenn-Copeland wrote and self-released Keyboard Fantasies in Huntsville, Ontario back in 1986. Recorded in an Atari-powered home-studio, the cassette featured seven tracks of a curious folk-electronica hybrid, a sound realized far before its time. Three decades on, the musician – now Glenn Copeland – began to receive emails from people across the world, thanking him for the music they’d recently discovered.

Art Johnston and Pepe Peña are civil rights leaders whose life and love is a force behind LGBTQ+ equality in the heart of the country. Their iconic gay bar, Sidetrack, has helped fuel movements and create community for decades in Chicago's queer enclave. But, behind the business and their historic activism exists a love unlike any other.