Queer Screen Film Fest

Overview

Film festivals love milestones. Queer Screen Film Fest notches up 12 years in 2025, which is no minor feat; however, it's celebrating a number of other anniversaries with one key screening. This year marks a decade since Holding the Man first reached cinemas, and also 30 years since Timothy Conigrave's memoir was initially published. A session of the Ryan Corr (Sting)- and Craig Stott (Barrier)-starring instant Australian classic is indeed on the event's lineup, then — at Sydney Opera House, and also to commemorate the 40th anniversary of New South Wales LGBTQ+ health organisation ACON.

One of two film festivals run by Queer Screen, which also organises the Mardi Gras Film Festival during the first half of each year, Queer Screen Film Fest is otherwise taking over Event Cinemas George Street across Wednesday, August 27–Sunday, August 31 for its 2025 edition. The program is solely in cinemas this year, opening with romantic thriller Plainclothes. So, it's, starting with Russell Tovey (Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes) and Tom Blyth (Billy the Kid) in a tale about a closeted undercover police officer.

Plainclothes is also part of something brand-new for Queer Screen Film Fest: its own Emerging Narrative Feature Competition. Six titles on the bill are in contention for a jury-decided $2500 prize. While the competition is designed to recognise filmmakers directing either their first or second narrative feature, all of 2025's entrants are from first-timers. As well as Carmen Emmi's Plainclothes, Rohan Parashuram Kanawade's Sundance World Cinema Dramatic Jury Prize-winnering romance Cactus Pears, the Cannes Critics' Week-selected Love Letters from Alice Douard and South Korea's Lucky, Apartment by Kangyu Ga-ram are up for the inaugural gong, as are Elena Oxman's Outerlands with Billions' Asia Kate Dillon and Superman's Louisa Krause, plus Sauna, the first Danish feature with a trans actor and character in a lead role.

Fellow highlights across the full Queer Screen Film Fest program — a lineup with 14 Australian premieres — include the Dylan O'Brien (Saturday Night)-led Twinless, a two-time Sundance award-winner, including for both its star and for writer/director James Sweeney (Straight Up); the Western Sydney-set From All Sides, the feature directorial debut of Bina Bhattacharya (a writer on Here Out West); and closing night's Really Happy Someday, which picked up the Best Canadian Feature Award at 2025's Inside Out Toronto 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival.