Queer Screen - Mardi Gras Film Festival

Queer Screen – based in Sydney, Australia is the country’s leading LGBTIQ+ screen culture organisation. They have been producing Australia’s premiere LGBTIQ+ film festival Queer Screen Mardi Gras Film Festival (Feb/Mar) since 1993. They also host a second festival Queer Screen Film Fest as well as offering completion funding and a pitching competition.

📆 The Queer Screen Goes to Cannes showcase will be held on Saturday 20 May 2023 from 16:30 – 18:30 (Palais K, Palais des Festivals).

Check out the teaser and find more project details below! 👇

Projects

Goes to Cannes

Sunflower

Category: Queer Screen Goes to Cannes

Directed by: Gabriel Carrubba

Produced by: Producer(s): Gabriel Carrubba, Zane Borg | Production Compnay: Pancake Originals

Country of production: Australia

Original title: Sunflower

Language: English

Runtime: 80'

Completed in: 2023

A seventeen-year-old boy struggles to understand and embrace his sexuality as he comes of age in the working class suburbs on Melbourne’s edge.

Goes to Cannes

Closing Night

Category: Queer Screen Goes to Cannes

Directed by: Timothy Despina Marshall

Produced by: Bec Dakin & Timothy Despina Marshall | B&T Films, Orange Entertainment Co.

Country of production: Australia

Original title: Closing Night

Language: English

Runtime: 82'

Completed in: 2023

When his life falls apart, a young queer theatre actor, poised to play the lead in The Glass Menagerie, must reckon with his demons and fight for survival while trapped in a hotel room with a sinister presence.

Goes to Cannes

Triple Oh!

Category: Queer Screen Goes to Cannes

Directed by: Poppy Stockell | Writer: Erica Harrison

Produced by: Poppy Stockell, Alexandra Galloway, Tamasin Simpkin | Sirius Pictures

Country of production: Australia

Original title: Triple Oh!

Language: English

Runtime: 45'

Completed in: 2023

Triple Oh! is a dark comedy-drama following the lives of two ambulance paramedics, as they save lives in absurd medical emergencies. Their personalities clash and are tested when street-smart Tayls introduces by-the-book Cate to her unconventional policy of having sex when a patient dies.

Goes to Cannes

One Person Protest

Category: Queer Screen Goes to Cannes

Directed by: Christopher Amos

Produced by: Christopher Amos | Chrysaor

Country of production: Australia, UK, Russia

Original title: One Person Protest

Language: English

Runtime: 80'

Completed in: 2024

One Person Protest is an observational undercover documentary following 73-year-old human rights activist Peter Tatchell’s daring mission to protest at the 2018 FIFA World Cup to raise awareness of LGBTQ+ injustice in Russia and Chechnya.

Goes to Cannes

The Queen of My Dreams

Category: Queer Screen Goes to Cannes

Directed by: Fawzia Mirza

Produced by: Andria Wilson Mirza + Fawzia Mirza for Baby Daal Productions; Jason Levangie and Marc Tetreault for Shut Up & Colour Pictures, Executive Producer Damon D'Oliveira

Country of production: Canada, Pakistan

Original title: The Queen of My Dreams

Language: English, Urdu

Runtime: 95'

Completed in: 2023

It’s 1999. In TORONTO, 22-year-old Pakistani, Muslim AZRA MALIK shows her girlfriend her favourite Bollywood film – ARADHANA, the 1969 hit starring Sharmila Tagore. Meanwhile, across the country in SYDNEY, NOVA SCOTIA, Azra’s mother, MARIAM (52), conservative, watches a similarly-labelled VHS (except Mariam’s recorded over her Bollywood movie with religious teachings) as she and her husband HASSAN pack for a trip back home to Pakistan. An awkward phone call between mother-daughter makes it evident that their relationship is strained. Two nights later, Azra gets another call from her mother: Hassan’s had a heart attack on the trip and died. This film takes place over the next 48 hours, as Azra flies to Pakistan and buries her father. Azra’s journey back to Pakistan incites memories and flashbacks to her – and her mother’s – past, to two OTHER life-altering time periods.