Returning for its 20th year, 2019's Brisbane Queer Film Festival starts with a restored masterpiece and ends with a new look at an icon. Sounds fitting for a fest that celebrates LGBTIQA and gender diverse tales on screen. It opens with Buddies, the 1985 movie that marked the first feature-length film about AIDS — and then closes with Wild Nights With Emily, starring Molly Shannon as poet Emily Dickinson.
Across BQFF's 11-day program, the festival has plenty of other stories to show when it arrives at New Farm Cinemas between Thursday, March 7 and Sunday, March 17. French film Sauvage follows a 22-year-old selling his body on the streets, rom-com Anchor and Hope contemplates the mechanics of starting a family with Oona Chaplin and Game of Thrones' Natalia Tena, and Mapplethorpe sees Matt Smith play the famous photographer.
Or there's also Obscuro Barroco, TransMilitary and Genderblend, which take three different looks at gender — one charting the life of transgender figure Luana Muniz in Rio de Janeiro, the second focusing on four US soldiers trying to serve as their country keeps changing its policy on their rights, and the last honing in on five folks who neither feel male or female.
BQFF also features multiple shorts programs from its 20-session lineup, delivering diversity in plenty of ways.