Archive

Sissy Boy Slap Party

A six-minute study of everything that can go wrong when Louis Negin and his Chippewa Sissy Boys try to graft the Three Stooges onto Kenneth Anger’s lilac bush. Originally conceived as a four-minute short accompanied by the world’s saddest music, this longer version takes a timeless look at some very human problems.
>>> Watch film clip on YouTube

Sita Sings The Blues

In her animation film, the director combines the story of Sita, an Indian goddess from the national epic “Ramayana” with the story of a modern-day woman whose husband informs her via email that he is leaving her.
In the Indian legend, Sita is given to Prince Rama in marriage after Rama conquers the other princely suitors for her hand. No sooner is Rama appointed crown prince than he falls victim of a plot that sends him into banishment for fourte...

Sleepless Knights

Carlos is spending the summer in the country with his family in order to help out with things. Perhaps he won’t even be returning to the capital, as economic prospects are hardly rosy there either. Extremadura on the other hand, sparsely populated and for a long time one of the most neglected regions in Europe, is experiencing a tentative upturn. Tourism and modernisation rub shoulders with almost archaic customs and a conservative, mostly elderly...

Small Talk (Ri Chang Dui Hua)

Anu is a tomboy. Although she was married off at a young age – as was customary in Taiwan in the 1970s – and had two children, she quickly divorced her violent husband and brought up her daughters alone. Since then her only relationships have been with women who, like her, earn a living as professional mourners at funerals. One of her daughters is filmmaker Hui-chen Huang. It’s considered taboo in Chinese culture to question a mother’s unconditio...

So Pretty

The lovers are reunited at the airport and soon they’re together in the white bedroom. The camera glides through the space, passing by desk, wardrobe, window and two bodies entwined, the first wonderfully languid pan in a film full of them. One reads to the other, in German, from Ronald M. Schernikau’s novel “So schön” and the passage could almost be describing this very scene, although it’s New York in 2018 rather than West Berlin in the 80s, an...

Some Like It Hot

In 1929 Chicago, two unemployed musicians flee angry mobsters by dressing up as women and joining a female band on tour. Billy Wilder’s riotous comedy, with its legendary performance by Marilyn Monroe is based on a German screenplay from the1930s

Songs of Love and Hate

The sudden disappearance of the popular host of a relationship advice radio show leaves a vacuum. Listeners are uncertain about the direction their romantic endeavours should take.

Soreret

Two young women from Israel, who wouldn't be out of place in any cool café in the world, coming across just as smart and fashion-conscious as their contemporaries in Berlin or Buenos Aires. But blogger Sarah and photographer Shlomit have paid a high price to have arrived in the here and now as modern women. Both of them were cast out by their families after fleeing from the ultra-orthodox Haredi community. Over the last decade, the community h...

Soum

In the shadow of a colonial past and a neo-capitalist present, Inti, Jai and Pauline are searching for their place in a world that was not made for them. As they roam the neighbourhood looking for somewhere to settle, they question their parents about faith, spirituality, roots and their experiences of migration. They decide to occupy an empty bank building in order to fill it with their memories, dreams and role play. A portrait of our time t...

Soy mi madre

Roaring Fork Valley, a region in Colorado in the western US: Glasgow artist Phil Collins studies the immigrants, who mostly come from northern Mexico and often work in the service branch. Most of them work at the most popular winter resort in the USA: Aspen. Inspired by Jean Genets "The Maids" (Theatre of the Absurd, the Surrealist) and from the melodrama of Latin American telenovelas, SOY MI MADRE is a portrait of the social reality of this regio...

Split - William to Chrysis. Portrait of a Drag Queen

A cinematic tribute to transgender celebrity International Chrysis (1951-1990). Rejected by his parents, this effeminate Bronx boy was desperate to be more than just William, and so he created Chrysis. With bright red hair, a voluptuous bosom and disarming smile, she made a living as a sex worker and began conquering the stages of ever larger Manhattan nightclubs. She won Andy Warhol’s affection, became Salvador Dalí’s muse and matured into an in...

Spring

Joe embarks on a sadomasochistic adventure with a stranger. For him it’s all about the sexual thrill, but for Tim their game satisfies deep psychological needs. An encounter between two people with very different desires, after which, nothing is the same as before.

Stadt Land Fluss

During the harvest, the farm hands are out working every day – even on Sundays. The barn has to be kept clean at all times and, if a cow refuses to bond with her calf, then it is raised by hand. Marko is an apprentice working on a large agricultural complex in the Nuthe Urstromvalley district sixty kilometers south of Berlin. If he passes his final examinations he will be a fully-fledged farmer. That is, if he really wants to. But he’s not sure. ...

Starfuckers

A Hollywood villa on a sultry summer night. The escort does what he was hired to do and gives his client the illusion he has paid for. “I’ll make you a star”, the customer says, before the tide turns abruptly and the power dynamics are unsettled. A revenge movie of the queer kind. 
 

Sto dnei do prikaza

Five young soldiers in the Soviet army find themselves exposed to a cycle of constant violence. Rebelling in various ways against humiliation and the assault on their dignity, they somehow manage to seize carefree moments of intimacy – even though they suspect that their struggle will be in vain and they will not survive their military service. Touching each other casually with their eyes and their bodies, they flee into silent imaginings, desper...

Stop-Zemlia

“They say when you get goosebumps, your soul touches your body.”

It‘s Masha, Iana and Senia‘s last but one year of high school. Among the thriving pot plants in the classroom and to the sound effects of a Biology lesson about physical signs of stress, the young protagonists grapple with themselves and with one another. 16-year-old Masha is the quiet center of Kateryna Gornostai’s feature debut. Steering clear of both simplified narratives and ove...

Storia di Piera

STORIA DI PIERA tells the story of a family, bound by archaic and unbreakable ties that supersede the laws of nature and age. The film portrays the relationship between a mother (Hanna Schygulla) and her daughter (Isabelle Huppert). The relationship is defined by friendship and sensuality. The girl declines school and discovers that theatre is the aim of her dreams. She has however the wish to be both a man and a woman. Her personality radiates s...

Stories of our Lives

Members of the multi-disciplinary art collective NEST spent several months travelling Kenya collecting stories of young LGBTI people – stories about their experiences and their lives in a country that is still extremely homophobic. Based on countless anonymous interviews, they developed five screenplays for short films which provide an insight into the current situation and the problems of these sexually marginalised young people.
These short, un...

Strákarnir okkar

Óttar Thor is the undisputed star of Icelandic premier league football team, KR. All hell breaks loose one day when he innocently tells reporters about his homosexuality. Moreover, not only did he neglect to inform his ex-beau ty queen wife and their teenage son about his decision to come out, it also completely slipped his mind to tell even his fellow team-members. The ensuing crisis is the final straw for a family already beset with problems an...

Strella

STRELLA, the name of one of the characters in the film, is a play on words, a combination of the female name Stella and the Greek noun Trela (madness, lunacy, or extravagance).
Yiorgos is released after having served a 14-year sentence for a murder he committed in his native village. He spends his first night of freedom at a cheap hotel in the centre of Athens where he meets a transsexual prostitute named Strella. They sleep together and are soon ...