The Melbourne Queer Film Festival is back in 2025, boasting over 35 national premieres, alongside keynotes, award shows, and more.
Stacked with LGBTQIA+ must-sees, this year’s festival is running from Thursday, November 13 to Sunday, November 23, celebrating 35 years of joy, creativity and liberation in queer filmmaking, with more than 130 films and 100 sessions screening at Cinema Nova, Collins Place, Melbourne Town Hall and The Capitol Theatre.
Before anywhere else in Australia, Melbourne became home to a major annual celebration of movies. That was over 70 years ago, when Melbourne International Film Festival debuted. Then in 1991, the Victorian capital made flick-watching history again, this time in the queer cinema space. Now, Melbourne Queer Film Festival is the nation’s oldest such fest, and it too keeps delighting audiences, this year with the theme of Searching for Queer Utopia.
Everything kicks off with an opening night extravaganza around the Victorian premiere of “Queens of the Dead”, directed by Tina Romero, daughter of the late pioneer of zombie filmmaking, George Romero. Lead actress Dominique Jackson will be in attendance, too, before leading a keynote discussion with FlexMami the following night.
There’s another keynote and Victorian premiere on Saturday, November 15 with Sophie Hyde, director of the Olivia Colman and John Lithgow-starring “Jimpa”, leading a keynote address ahead of the film’s screening.
Other screenings include the Tehran-shot guerrilla-style film “The Crowd” (directed by Sahand Kabiri) about a queer youth-led resistance against patriarchal norms; “Hot Milk”, a Greek Island-set story of intergenerational desire starring Emma Mackey (“Sex Education”) and Fiona Shaw (“Killing Eve”); a documentary portrait of paralympian and veteran Angela Madsen in “Row of Life” and “The Serpent’s Skin”, a blend of magic, romance and dark humour in goth-trans cinema from Australian director Alice Maio Mackay.
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There’s also a tale of post-breakup chaos in “Departures”; a dive into the lives of young queer women in Greece in “Bearcave”; a trans-led reimagining of our favourite 90s movies in “She’s The He”; a regional India-set, multi-award-winning story of grief and love in “Cactus Pears”, and “Heightened Scrutiny”, a documentary about the ongoing fight for transgender rights in the United States.
Like other film festivals, the Melbourne Queer Film Festival will also host awards shows and retrospectives for films that have passed their premieres, celebrating not just the new but also the endearing favourites and shining stars in queer cinema from around the world.
Melbourne Queer Film Festival runs from Thursday, November 13 to Sunday, November 23. Discover the full program or get tickets here.