KASHISH 2021 Documentary SHORTS (out of competition)    

ABOUT QUEENS AND OTHER COLORS (De reinas y otros colores)             
Dir: Juan H. Zuluaga / 17 min / Guatemala

In a necessity to express themselves, five young men gathered in an abandoned house to share their experiences, frustrations, dreams and opinions on what’s like to be a Drag Queen in a conservative country like Guatemala.

AGAINST THE WIND      
Dir: Ruhul Robin Khan / 7 min / Bangladesh

Noor Alam invents himself as an Intersex person after the age of 25. He had experienced a myriad struggle until defining his identity. Noor was born as a girl with ambiguous genitalia and named Shubra. At the age of five Doctor found two hernia in both sides of her female organ, but after surgery doctor has ensured those are testicles. They declared Noor as a boy! Against the Wind is a biopic of Noor Alam, who is country first professed intersex person working for community development.

ALL MONSTERS ARE HUMAN    
Dirs: Helen Spooner, Hugh Davies / 21 min / UK, Azerbaijan, Turkey

In September 2017 the police carried out brutal attacks against the LGBT community in Azerbaijan. Dozens of people were arrested and subsequently tortured and raped in prison. Like many others, Roma, Katrin and Lisa fell victim to these police raids and suffered cruel treatment. They escaped from Azerbaijan and found refuge in Istanbul. Through their narratives and the use of original animation, this documentary reveals their past as well as their fears about the future. LGBT individuals are one of the most vulnerable groups in Turkey. According to Roma, “This is not a life. This is just existing.” Even in Istanbul they live in daily fear that they may suffer the same fate as in their homeland.

BRAZIL’S FORBIDDEN SHIRT (A Camisa Proibida)              
Dirs: Diego Mello, Igor França, João Pedro Castro, Rafael de Moura Machado / 11 min / Brazil

Brazil is known as football country due to its passion for the game and it’s an international success, but at a closer look we see that the game isn’t open for everyone. The football country is also filled with homophobia, excluding LGBTQ+ people from the game, from the stands and in a curious way even excluding a number from the jerseys. Brazil’s Forbidden Shirt tells the story of this number and of people that felt first-hand how Brazilian football can be homophobic.

CROSSINGS (Traversées)
Dir: Amandine Le Goff / 18 min / France

Léon goes to the swimming pool in his one piece swimsuit. He accepts that I go with him. Facing others’ gaze, he deploys his own reflection on his gender identity.

DON’T BE A DICK!           
Dir: Amir Ovadia Steklov / 9 min / Germany

Short animation that investigates the representation of male body image across history and modern porn culture with humour and shocking facts.

FABULOUS FARMER (Pasyonistang Magsasaka)
Dir: Alfredo Del Rosario Ruzol / 5 min / Philippines

A gay farmer, typhoon Haiyan survivor, with his live-in partner, are expecting their first child. He provides food for their soon to be big family by sustainably growing rice and local fruits for sale. He worries that the next generation may not take farming seriously -or worse, avoid becoming a farmer because of how little benefit farmers get in the country.

FREEDOM (Libertà)        
Dir: Savino Carbone / 30 min / Italy

Bari, 2019. What does it mean to be free? Two homosexual migrants talk about their status of asylum seekers. Meanwhile, the effects of the new government’s migration policies are becoming tougher.

FROM ME TO WE (Eingondagi Eikhoida)              
Dir: Neeraj Churi / 11 min / UK, India

The documentary follows the journey of Sadam as he battles his internal and external demons growing up gay in Manipur, India. Fighting homophobia, rape and drug addition, he raises to change the very society that was responsible for is downward spiral.

GETTING MARRIED (Casarnos)  
Dir: Bruno Montenegro / 5 min / Peru

Bruno is a transgender boy who doesn’t believe in marriage, but a few months ago he learned that his friends from Iquitos Almendra and Luko were married in Argentina and returned to Peru. So he decided to go to Iquitos to dispel his doubts.

I AM (Yo soy)    
Dir: Jaime Fidalgo / 10 min / Spain

A solitary night watchman opens the doors of his work to take us on a cathartic inner journey, in which he strips off the mask he’s created before the world to finally question who he is.

I DO NOT BELONG IN THIS BODY              
Dir: Parviz Majidov / 12 min / Azerbaijan

Devran, a 23-year-old transman, has left his home in western Azerbaijan to seek hormonal therapy for gender adaptation surgery. But in Azerbaijan, few doctors or health clinics are willing to treat transgender people. While there are more options in the capital Baku than in his hometown of Shamkir, Devran still faces prejudice and discrimination when trying to obtain even basic medical treatment.

IN A STRANGE ROOM (En Una Habitación Extraña)         
Dir: Emilio J. López / 38 min / Spain, Germany, Italy

In the summer of 2008, Enzo travels to Berlin to work on a creative documentary and find a former lover.

LETTER TO MY MOTHER (نامه ای به مادرم)           
Dir: Amina Maher / 20 min / Islamic Republic of Iran, Germany, Malaysia

A heartfelt letter to tell the mother the most painful of secrets. Amina, who in 2002 was the small protagonist of Ten by Kiarostami is now a transgender director who tries to make her voice heard, understood, and be understood.

MAKING SAMANTHA    
Dirs: T Cooper, Allison Glock-Cooper / 11 min / USA

I Am Samantha, by singer-songwriter Benjamin Scheuer, was inspired by his friend, Samantha Williams. Director T Cooper and Allison Glock-Cooper gathered 27 trans actors to make the music video, and to tell the story of the universal human journey to find identity, acceptance and love.

MOTTA
Dir: Nish Gera / 16 min / UK

Bound in flowers, a tattooed hand strokes a face. Ropes unwind on the floor. Tremors of pain, tremors of release. What do you desire? Motta follows “hard to classify” Brazilian artist Fabio da Motta as he questions the boundaries between fantasy, power, provocation and art.

NAOMI REPLANSKY AT 100         
Dir: Megan Rossman / 7 min / USA

This short documentary shares wisdom from the renowned poet as she celebrates her 100th year.

PERSONAJE PERSONAJE              
Dirs: Renata Rezende, Begoña Izquierdo / 35 min / Spain

The documentary Personaje Personaje is a brief collage portrait of a young queer artist who deals with the intimate problems of maturing, while lending his body to other entities during his performances, in his quest to break with conventional establishment transformism.

QUEER FEAR     
Dir: Carla Elizabeth Hernandez / 5 min / Canada

Queer Fear is a short film that will take you through Carla’s 28 year journey of struggling to accept her sexual identity. An emotional breakdown followed by a global pandemic, forced her to sit in isolation with her thoughts after years of avoiding them. Realizing now more than ever how important self care is, Carla begins a search for the answers she had been avoiding all these years.

SORRY WE MISSED YOU              
Dir: Craig Bettendorf / 34 min / USA

Every day people are born and every day people die. What we’re able to accomplish in our relatively short lives can have a profound effect on others and even on society and the world. These are the stories of some of those who contributed greatly and for whatever reason aren’t exactly front-of-mind in our collective consciousness.

TAKE ME TO PROM        
Dir: Andrew Moir / 21 min / Canada

Featuring the high school prom stories of queer people aged 17 to 88, Take Me To Prom captures 70 years of LGBTQ social progress through this adolescent milestone.

THE DRAG MANIFESTO
Dir: Felipe Follador / 6 min / Netherlands

Three drag artists, from a new generation of performers, discuss the art of drag and share their drag manifesto.

THE GAYTRIARCHY AND WHY WE NEED PRIDE  
Dir: TJ Narula / 10 min / Australia

Through the eyes of Australia’s three leading LGTBQI+ activists, this documentary comments on the dogma and bigotry that take place in the name of religion as well as culture across oppressive countries and how it impacts the LGBTQI+ community. It aims to question the validity of purist versions of all religions and their application across the sexuality and the gender spectrum across conservative cultures.

THE MANY PINK TRIANGLES (Los Muchos Triangulos Rosas)       
Dir: Luca Gaetano / 28 min / Italy, Argentina, Chile, Spain, Uruguay

This documentary tells the story of the LGBTTI communities who have suffered persecution, prison and torture for their sexual condition under different military dictatorships in recent decades. This first chapter is a journey around Spain, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, countries where the dictatorship has strongly marked the history of the LGBTTI community, oppressed by police regimes and social intolerance.

THE OUTCASTED             
Dir: Gautami Purushottam Berde / 8 min / India

The Outcasted is a film that raises concerns about the mental, physical and sexual Health issues faced by the ‘the Third Gender of India’. The social determinants that affect Transgender Health in India as a result of social rejection. The film also highlights the noble work of two Indian NGOs that work for providing Health care services to the Transgender community in India.

THE SILENT B (B Não é de Biscoito)         
Dirs: Hilda Lopes Pontes, Chris Mariani / 16 min / Brazil

 Bisexuals exist.

VISIBLE
Dirs: Elena Hutchison, Chisom Ukoha, Autumn Love / 6 min / USA

A student-filmed documentary grown out of the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, VISIBLE is a story chronicling the lives of trans and non-binary young people as they face one of the most difficult years in history. Our film seeks to answers how quarantine affects gender presentation–and, most importantly– hopes to shed light on a community easily forgotten in the shadows of a pandemic.

WE’RE ALL GOD’S CREATION (Sab Rab De Bande)            
Dir: Sukhdeep Singh / 28 min / India

Sab Rab De Bande brings forth the various challenges that LGBTQ Sikhs grapple with and the different ways in which they reconcile their faith and gender/sexual identities. The documentary, through interviews with LGBTQ Sikhs, captures the varied experiences of queer Sikhs.