Overview
Celebrating both the latest and greatest must-see movies is what film festivals are all about — and Brisbane's returning New Farm Queer Film Festival couldn't be more committed to that remit. The River City's annual showcase of new and classic LGBTQIA+ flicks, the event began back in 2022, proved a hit, and keeps returning year after year with an impressive lineup. On 2024's program from Thursday, October 3–Sunday, October 13: movies starring Elliot Page, Tilda Swinton, Murray Bartlett, Dylan O'Brien and Evan Rachel Wood, plus Gregg Araki's Teen Apocalypse trilogy.
2024 marks seven years since Page (The Umbrella Academy) last featured on the big screen Down Under. Close to You brings that absence from local cinemas to an end, with the film boasting the actor's first male movie role, as a trans man heading home to his family for the first time since transitioning.
Swinton (The Killer) features in Problemista, as directed by and also starring Fantasmas and Los Espookys' Julio Torres; The White Lotus' Bartlett and Fantasmas guest star O'Brien are part of the cast for closing night's Ponyboi, which follows an intersex sex worker on the run from the mob; and Wood (Weird: The Al Yankovic Story) plays a cheerleading coach in Backspot, with Devery Jacobs (Echo) as the squad's newcomer.
This year's NFQFF kicks off with Georgian film Crossing, about a teacher looking for her long-lost niece — and, as another of its big titles, boasts Caught by the Tides from Jia Zhangke (Ash Is the Purest White), which premiered at Cannes back in May. If you haven't caught The Devil's Bath on the small screen yet (or even if you have), a big-screen session of the Austrian standout by Goodnight Mommy and The Lodge's Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala is guaranteed stellar viewing. Plus, including supervillain parody The People's Joker, which gives the caped-crusader realm a queer coming-of-age spin, is perfect timing.
Another highlight, Scala!!! tells of the London cinema in the same name. The rest of the documentary's moniker is Or, The Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits, which gives viewers an idea of the kind of tale it's telling — with iconic filmmaker John Waters among its interviewees.
NFQFF's 2024 lineup also features not just one retrospective trio, but two. Araki's Totally F***ed Up, The Doom Generation and Nowhere sit on the bill alongside François Ozon's Criminal Lovers, Water Drops on Burning Rocks and Sitcom.
New Farm Queer Film Festival returns for 2024 to New Farm Cinemas, 701 Brunswick Street, New Farm, from Thursday, October 3–Sunday, October 13. Head to the festival website for tickets and more details.