Two stellar docs — one about the dangers of place, the other the flexibility of identity — screen at AFI Fest.
lgbtq
Ebs Burnough’s composite portrait of Truman Capote reveals all the melodrama and queasy class navigation that seeped into every pore of his queer being.
Jen Rainin’s documentary about famed lesbian magazine Curve is a welcome snapshot of queer lit history, in all the publication’s ups and downs.
Jonathon Wysocki’s debut is a charming portrait of the sound and fury of queer middle-class teendom.
Lazlo & Dylan Tonk’s documentary about Lady Galore is a technically proficient look at the title drag queen that comes up short.
Arash Es’haghi celebrates an unnamed farmer dancing his way to self-love in Iran.
Elegance Bratton’s documentary is a kaleidoscopic view of the unhoused queer youth of Chelsea Pier.
Starring the 2018 Broadway revival cast, director Joe Mantello gives the 1968 gay classic new life.
The queer-centered YouTube series gets compiled into a winsome feature that works best as a Queer Culture primer.
The extremely slow pacing of Tsai Ming-liang’s study in loneliness pays off with subtle tenderness.
Mike Mossalam’s debut feature is a vibrant mosaic of Queer Arab Muslim-American life.
We talk to a rising filmmaker about bringing rawness and reality into her work.
Isabel Sandoval directs & stars in a layered story of a woman struggling to live in a hostile world.
David France’s gut-wrenching documentary on the state-sanctioned purge of GLBT people in Chechnya is an excellent expose of the atrocities and portrait of the heroes in Russia.
Gus Van Sant’s squeaky clean biopic about the famed gay rights activist marks a myopic and pandering misstep in the director’s filmography.
Sam Feder’s documentary provides an empathetic if slightly uneven look at the trans community, voicing its beauty and understanding its anger.
Gus Van Sant’s 1991 queer classic is a mournful tone poem about lost youth, and the intersection between class and queerness.
Gus Van Sant’s queer Western was received with scorn by critics when it first came out, but its celebration of the abject deserves reconsideration.