NARRATIVE FEATURES (Non-Competition)
BETWEEN US
Dir: Jude Bauman / 97 min / 2022 / France / French / Narrative Feature
Elodie and Laetitia live in close love and dream of having a child. As Elodie discovers that she cannot get pregnant because of a health problem and encounters financial troubles, they decide to take a roommate.
DAWN, HER DAD & THE TRACTOR
Dir: Shelley Thompson / 92 min / 2021 / Canada / English / Narrative Feature / First Feature
When a young woman with a startling resemblance to John Andrew’s wife Miranda appears days before her funeral, John Andrew MacGinnis begins an odyssey towards understanding. His son Donald is now Dawn, home to mourn her mother and repair the estrangement with her Dad. As Dawn reconnects with her sister Tammy and her fiancé Byron, a new family order begins to emerge. As they restore an ancient family tractor and work towards showing it as a kind of memorial to Dawn’s mom, Dawn and her Dad cautiously rebuild their relationship and come to understand the mechanics of the heart.
DOWN IN PARIS
Dir: Antony Hickling / 102 min / 2021 / France / English, French / Narrative Feature
Richard, a film maker in his forties, is suddenly overwhelmed by anxiety during filming. He walks off set and wanders through the Paris night in search of answers, comfort and inspiration. During his sleepless night, he meets many people, some friendly, some disturbing, some known, and some unknown. Richard has to confront his fears and question his deepest desires until the first light of dawn.
I’M NOT GAY
Dir: Nathan Short / 80 min / 2022 / Australia / English / Narrative Feature / First Feature
A conflicted gay man struggles to teach his younger self about the challenges of adult life. Searching for answers inside stories from his past, he must confront his nature and the man he will become. Documentary meets musical feature in this experimental coming of age drama about power and masculinity in modern day Australia – a bridge between the gay and straight experience.
JULY, 2020
Dir: Sahej Nandrajog / 83 min / 2021 / India / English / Narrative Feature
Fraught with loneliness and desperation, two unnamed characters have no one to turn to but each other. Told over the course of six months during the COVID-19 Lockdown, the film explores the push and pull relationship between its two central characters. They talk, they laugh, they fight. Then they do it all over again.
JUMP, DARLING
Dir: Phil Connell / 90 min / 2020 / Canada / English / Narrative Feature / First Feature
Jump, Darling follows two lost souls—a grandmother and her grandson—both lost in their lives. Russell has just broken up with his long-term boyfriend, a man who didn’t support his drag persona, Fishy Falters. With nowhere to live and no stable income, Russell moves in with his grandmother, Margaret (the Oscar- and BAFTA Award-winning actor and LGBTQ+ ally late Cloris Leachman) as her faculties shut down, Margaret comes to depend on her grandson. Before long, Russell realizes he needs his grandmother, too. They encourage each other to live life as they would have it lived and to remember that sometimes letting go is a path to peace.
SANWRI – LOVE BEYOND GENDER
Dir: Pallavi Roy / 110 min / 2022 / India / Hindi / Narrative Feature / First Feature
Bhanwar, a simpleton young man in the rural Rajasthan wants a bride for him but gets duped. Instead of a woman, he is married off to a transgender person – Sanwri. Having no resort Bhanwar and his uncle decide to keep Sanwri for their household work but fearing the social ostracization they also try to keep her actual identity a secret. Bhanwar and Sanwri eventually fall in love and fight to survive as a couple in a conservative, oppressive society where marriages are meant to take place only between a man and a woman, and traditional norms are more important than humanity.
