10 LGBTQ+ Films We Can’t Wait to Stream From Frameline47
This year’s Frameline Film Festival is already underway, highlighting the best and boldest LGBTQ+ films of the year. But for those unable to make it to San Francisco’s legendary event, we’ve got some great news for you — starting June 24th and continuing until July 2nd; you can purchase a streaming pass to watch many of the amazing films featured throughout Frameline47.
Nearly 60 of the programs currently playing throughout Frameline47 will be made available, making this the largest collection of streaming titles from any LGBTQ+ film festival worldwide. And to get ready for this year’s queer-tastic steaming session, we’ve compiled some of our favorite films that you can stream.
Check out ten of our most anticipated flicks we cannot wait to watch from Frameline47 streaming session below:
Heartbeast
Pairing vibrant neon visuals with pitch-black psychology, Heartbeast follows young aspiring rapper Elina, played by up-and-coming queer musical artist Elsi Sloan. Leaving behind a supportive network of friends in Finland, Elina moves into the home of her mother’s beau in southern France, forming an intense, instantaneous bond with her new step-sister Sofia (Carmen Kassovitz, daughter of famed French actor/director Mathieu Kassovitz), a ballerina who introduces her to a hard-partying scene of sex and drugs.
The Mattachine Family
Jumping through moments in time between a collection of characters, The Mattachine Family finds a fiercely in love gay couple — photographer Thomas (Tortorella) and actor Oscar (Di Pace) — maintaining their relationship through steadily remaining fiercely in love through geographical setbacks, after their foster son returns to live with his birth mother. Just as Oscar’s acting career begins to rise, Thomas enters something of a pre-midlife existential crisis. As the couple begins to have differing views and desires around what a potential family looks like together moving forward, Thomas leans heavily on a close-knit core of friends for comfort and meaning through it all.
Coming Around
“We are here. We are queer. We are Muslim. We are both, relentlessly without contradiction and without apology.” Eman is a brilliant academic, a strong and empowered woman, and active in her queer Muslim community. She speaks on panels, stars in a queer play, and is an all-around badass. That is, except when she goes home to Missouri to visit her traditional Muslim mother, whom she has yet to come out to. When she starts dating a cisgender man, it seems as though her worlds can finally coexist, but can she live up to the traditional expectations?
Casa Susanna
During the 1950s, a group of closeted trans women and crossdressers found unexpected refuge in Casa Susanna, a remote house in the New York Catskills where they were able to freely express their authentic selves. During their short stay, these guests would do performances and photoshoots, lounge in clothes that they would otherwise only fantasize about wearing, and form an unlikely (and for some, life-saving) community of kindred.
This Place
What does it mean to belong to a place, a tribe, a family? Two women — one Tamil, the other half Mohawk, half Iranian — search for answers to these questions and more as they meet, explore the city of Toronto, and slowly begin to fall in love. Poet Kawenniióhstha, a newcomer to the city, is in search of the father she’s never known. Malai and her older brother grapple with the alcoholic past of their gravely ill father, even as he tries to reconnect with them.
Out of Uganda
Just weeks ago, the Ugandan parliament passed a draconian anti-gay law that is among the harshest in Africa—where already more than 30 countries outlaw homosexuality. In this timely and powerful documentary, screening on World Refugee Day, we meet Philip, Hussein, Remy, and Shammy — four Ugandan refugees who are the dignified, human faces of an unfolding crisis. Awaiting asylum in Switzerland, these exiles—two gay men, a lesbian, and a transwoman — reveal the emotional and physical toll of being persecuted in your own country—and sometimes by your own family — for being who you are.
Before I Change My Mind
Alberta, Canada, 1987. Robin (Vaughan Murrae) has just moved into town with their single father and is doing their best to try and fit in. It doesn’t help that the other kids can’t figure out whether Robin is “a boy or a girl.” Ostracized at first, Robin slowly befriends Carter (Dominic Lippa), a stand-offish bully that is equally intimidating and alluring. The two start a complicated and ultimately poisonous bond, in which Robin learns the dangerous pitfalls of trying to fit in.
A Place of Our Own
Shining with quiet authenticity and a fierce heart, A Place of Our Own is the story of two transwomen in Bhopal, India, fighting for a life that is more than marginal. Directed and crewed by the Ekarta Collective, which blends experienced and first-time filmmakers whose lives and identities mirror their characters, this film — which won the Audience Award at the SXSW Film Festival — is crafted with grit and care.
The Lost Boys
Inside a youth correctional facility in Belgium, pensive teenager Joe is both excited about his upcoming release back into the world, and apprehensive about what awaits him. But his thoughts of freedom are soon derailed by the new boy in the next cell: a live-wire tattoo artist named William. Their spark is instantaneous, and the young men soon find their passion unleashed. As Joe’s release date approaches, he begins to wonder whether liberty will come at too high a cost.
Girls Don’t Cry
Capturing a vibrant teen romance along the back roads of the Italian countryside, this gritty but sweet coming-of-age road trip story is both cinematically gorgeous and endearingly intimate. Fueled by the loss of her father, artsy teenager Ele channels her grief into photography and fixing up the old family camper van. Desperate to return to her sister in Romania, her friend Mia becomes entangled in a violent crime. When Ele’s mother threatens to get rid of the van, together the two young women flee to the north, encountering beauty and danger in the host of characters they meet along the way. As they navigate confusion and loss, their journey takes them across rivers and borders of the heart.
