Photo caption: Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA. Courtesy of Frameline and Mubi.
Frameline, the oldest and longest-running LGBTQ+ film festival in the world, celebrates its FIFTIETH annual festival, beginning June 17 and running through June 27. Frameline50 brings us festival award-winners from Cannes to the Berlinale, with over 140 films from 35 countries.
This year, the festival returns after several years to San Francisco’s Castro Theatre for its biggest night. Other venues in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland include the Roxie Theater, the Vogue Theatre, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), and The New Parkway Theater.
I’m guessing that the hottest ticket will be for the fest’s closing night film: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the latest from writer-director Jane Schoenbrun, following up their breakthrough hitI Saw the TV Glow. Highly acclaimed at its Cannes premiere last month, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is an affectionate homage to slasher filmmaking driven by queer sexual obsession, starring Emmy-winners Gillian Anderson (The X-Files) and Hannah Einbinder (Hacks). Schoenbrun and Einbinder will appear in person at the screening.
Other festival highlights will include:
Opening Night with D’Arcy Drollinger’sLady Champagne, the Festival Centerpiece –Byrdie O’Connor’sBarbara Forever, and the Pride Kickoff Film, Jennifer M. Kroot’s Hunky Jesus, .
The newest sex comedy from pioneering queer filmmaker Gregg Araki (Mysterious Skin), I Want Your Sex, starring Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza).
Actor Colman Domingo will attend in person to receive an award.
As befitting a silver anniversary, Frameline50 will look back on films from its past half-century of programming: Bound, All Over the Guy, Desert Hearts, Cruising,Still Black: A Portrait of Black Transmen,Paris Is Burning (now celebrating its 35th anniversary),Caravaggio, and thenewly restored Macho Dancer.
Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon in BOUND. Courtesy of Frameline.
As in my Frameline coverage last year, I’ll be focusing on international cinema, especially directorial debuts. The Frameline programmers have a gift for finding the promising first films of new directors, such as last year’s Diciannove. In this year’s program, I’ve already focused on some promising films from South Africa, Tunisia, Brazil, Norway and French-speaking Canada. Just before the fest opens, I’ll be coming back with specific recommendations.
You can peruse the program and get passes and tickets at Frameline. Here’s the festival trailer.
This charming comedy Gondola is the work of a unique filmmaker, German writer-director Veit Helmer, who has been making dialogue-free films in Central Asian nations for a decade. A gondola links two mountainsides in rural Georgia, and the two female gondola operators fall in love as they pass each other high above the valley.
It’s remarkable how Helmer is able to pack so many story elements into a film without dialogue. (I also love Helmer’s The Bra, which I tagged as just your average silent Azerbaijani comedy.) Gondola is ever funny, sweet and imaginative.
I screened Gondola for the 2024 Frameline film festival. Gondola can be streamed for free from kanopy and can be rented inexpensively from Amazon, AppleTV and YouTube.
Manfredi Marini (right) in Giovanni Tortorici’s DICIANNOVE. Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories and Frameline.
The title of the coming-of-age film Diciannove is Italian for nIneteen, the age of Leonardo (Manfredi Marini), who is leaving his Palermo home for the first time to begin college in London. Ever restless, he is eager to embark on his life journey, but doesn’t know where to head, and, being nineteen, he won’t listen to anyone else. In mere days, Leonardo pivots from business courses in London to the study of Italian literature at a university in Siena. He discovers a passion for old Italian writers – just not the ones his professor assigns.
Nineteen is an age that most of us sample experiences, but Leonardo is an introvert, sometimes bratty, who refuses to socialize, and we wonder if he will ever forge relationships or act on his sexual urges. Diciannove is that highly original coming-of-age film in which what even Leonardo chooses NOT to do is interesting, and we can’t predict what could make his spirit soar at the end.
Diciannove is the debut feature for writer-director Giovanni Tortorici, a protege of Luca Guadagnino, who produced the film. Tortorici and cinematographer Massimiliano Kuveiller (who has also worked with Guadagnino) maintain visual interest by throwing everything at the screen – disco scenes with an operatic score, slow motion, animated dreams and every kind of fancy cut. Nighttime scenes in a cold and hard London give way to lovingly beautiful shots of tranquil Siena.
Diciannove is the singular and imaginative calling card of a new auteur; Tortorici may be a visual show-off, but he has an uncommon gift for creating a realistic, but compelling and unpredictable character.
I screened Diciannove in June for Frameline. It’s now releasing into US arthouse theaters, including Laemmle’s Monica Film Center and the Glendale.
Photo caption: Marion Barbeau in DRONE. Courtesy of Frameline.
Émilie (Marion Barbeau) is stalked through Paris by a mysterious drone, in Drone, a thriller that explores issues of privacy and the male gaze. A magnificent 4-minute opening sequence, introduces us to the vulnerability caused by the voyeur drone. Émilie is funding her architecture studies by working as a cam girl, a situation where she is physically detached and in control of her male customers. But there is no detachment or control whenever the paranoia-inducing drone suddenly appears.
There are exhilarating set pieces in a parking garage, a motorcycle chase and an abandoned factory, as writer-director Simon Bouisson and cinematographer Ludovic Zulli keep their drone camera in pursuit of the story’s stalker drone. In his first theatrical feature, Bouisson keeps the tension pounding, all the way to the ingenious ending.
Marion Barbeau in DRONE. Courtesy of Frameline.
Émilie is a recent architecture graduate from Lilles who has earned a high-powered fellowship in Paris. As her fellowship project, she chooses an adaptive reuse of an abandoned factory. Of course, even without the drone, we would fear for Émilie’s safety as she wanders around the dark, creepy, abandoned factory and takes long solo jogs through the city at night.
Who is flying the drone? Is it a camgirl customer who has hacked the firewall? Is it her toxic male classmate? Or her swaggering, entitled boss? Or, perhaps most terrifying, nobody at all?
Émilie is relationship-shy, but reluctantly intrigued by a DJ. Will the budding romance put both women in drone-jeopardy?
Marion Barbeau, a former ballet dancer, is superb as Émilie. Émilie, so vulnerable throughout the movie, is remarkably strong and determined, which lifts Drone above the ordinary woman-in-peril genre. Barbeau is able to project Émilie’s fundamental badassness.
I’ve listed Drone in the special Festival Films category of my Best Movies of 2025 – So Far. I screened Drone for Frameline (where it was my favorite film), and I’ll let you know when it has a theatrical or VOD release in the US.
Photo caption: Marion Barbeau in DRONE. Courtesy of Frameline and StudioCanal.
Frameline, the oldest and longest-running LGBTQ+ film festival in the world, opens tomorrow, June 18 and runs through June 28. The program includes 150 films from 40 countries, including 42 world, North American and US premieres. As always, it’s a very rich slate of films.
I’ve selected five international films to highlight. Let’s begin with two Must See directorial debuts from France and Italy.
Drone: Émilie (Marion Barbeau) is stalked through Paris by a mysterious drone, in a thriller that explores issues of privacy and the male gaze. A magnificent 4-minute opening sequence, introduces us to the vulnerability caused by the voyeur drone. Émilie is funding her architecture studies by working as a cam girl, a situation where she is physically detached from and in control of her male customers. But there is no detachment or control whenever the paranoia-inducing drone suddenly appears. There are exhilarating set pieces in a parking garage, a motorcycle chase and an abandoned factory, as writer-director Simon Bouisson and cinematographer Ludovic Zulli keep their drone camera in pursuit of the story’s stalker drone. In his first theatrical feature, Bouisson keeps the tension pounding, all the way to the ingenious ending. Must See.
Manfredi Marini (right) in Giovanni Tortorici’s DICIANNOVE. Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories and Frameline.
Diciannove: The title is Italian for nIneteen, the age of Leonardo (Manfredi Marini), who is leaving his Palermo home for the first time to begin college in London. Ever restless, he is eager to embark on his life journey, but doesn’t know where to head, and, being nineteen, he won’t listen to anyone else. In mere days, Leonardo pivots from business courses in London to the study of Italian literature at a university in Siena. Nineteen is an age that most of us sample experiences, but Leonardo is an introvert, sometimes bratty, who refuses to socialize, and we wonder if he will ever forge relationships or act on his sexual urges. Diciannove is that highly original coming-of-age film in which even what Leonardo chooses NOT to do is interesting, and we can’t predict what could make his spirit soar at the end. Diciannove is the debut feature for writer-director Giovanni Tortorici, a protege of Luca Guadagnino, who produced the film. Tortorici and cinematographer Massimiliano Kuveiller (who has also worked with Guadagnino) maintain visual interest by throwing everything at the screen – disco scenes with an operatic score, slow motion, animated dreams and every kind of fancy cut. Diciannove is the singular and imaginative calling card of a new auteur; see it at Frameline before its US arthouse release later this year. Must See.
Bruce Pintos in KEEP COMING BACK. Courtesy of Frameline.
And here are three more highlights from Frameline’s menu of international cinema – from Uruguay, Croatia and Taiwan:
Keep Coming Back: In his first feature, director Sergio de León sends up the conventions of the underdog drama with deadpan drollery. In rural Uruguay, 18-year-old Emilio’s mother dies, leaving with a pile of debts and a collection of pigeons. The only way he can keep the family house is to win the great pigeon race. Staggered by grief, confounded by financial stress and with his hormones raging toward a sexual awakening, Emilio (Bruce Pintos) plunges ahead earnestly. Absurd hilarity ensues, including a very funny I’m sorry about your mom and the robust retelling of the story of Winkie, the historical hero pigeon. US Premiere.
Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day: Croatia’s official submission for the 2025 Academy Award for Best International Feature, this is an aspirational film with an epic sweep, passionate sex and profound tragedy, all the way to unexpected redemption. This searing critique of the Tito regime pits a man of principle and ideas against the repression of the small-minded. The heroic bravery that helps overthrow Nazi puppets is revealed to be no match for the homophobia and mindless adherence to the party line of post-war apparatchiks. Frameline hosts the International Premiere.
Silent Sparks: In this Taiwanese neo-noir, small time hood Pua is released from prison and checks in with the swaggering, exuberant local crime lord. The boss assigns him to a lieutenant, Mi-Ji, who happens to be Pua’s former cell-mate. But when Pua and Mi-Ji meet again, the encounter is a study in social awkwardness. Pua just wants to start earning money and working his way up in the syndicate, but Mi-Ji is surprisingly unhelpful. What explains Mi-Ji’s behavior toward Pua? As Silent Sparks smolders on, the risks escalate. Promising first feature for writer-director Ping Chu.
You can buy tickets for these films and peruse the entire program at Frameline. Here’s the trailer for Drone.
Photo caption: Olivia Coleman and John Lithgow in Sophie Hyde’s JIMPA, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Photo by Mark De Blok. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
Frameline, the oldest and longest-running LGBTQ+ film festival in the world, opens June 18 and runs through June 28. The 49th(!) Frameline brings us festival award-winners from Sundance to the Berlinale, with 150 films from 40 countries, including 42 world, North American and US premieres.
Films will screen at the Herbst Theatre and the ACT’s Toni Rembe Theater, as well as familiar arthouses like the Roxie, the Vogue, the New Parkway and, this year for the first time, the Rafael. Select films will be streamable after the in-person fest; (I’ll have more about that when I learn which films will be available online).
Here are some Frameline49 highlights:
The fest opens with John Lithgow and Olivia Colman starring in the Sundance indie Jimpa, about the Amsterdam reunion of a multigenerational queer Australian family. The HIV-positive patriarch (Lithgow) is visited by his daughter (Colman) and her non-binary child (Aud Mason-Hyde). Described as “funny and heartfelt”.
The closing night film is the dramedy Twinless. Two guys meet at a support group for people who have lost their twin – straight Roman (Dylan O-Brien) and gay Dennis (James Sweeney) – and form an unlikely connection. O’Brien won the best acting award at Sundance and the film, written and directed by Sweeney, won the best drama award. See it now, before its September release.
The program includes a whopping 25 documentary features. Given the strength of the docs in past Framelines (Loving Highsmith, Making Montgomery Clift), this looks like a rich slate of docs.
Some of the screenings are already selling fast and, although Frameline may add some screenings, it would be wise to get your tickets now. You can peruse the program and get passes and tickets at Frameline.
As in my Frameline coverage last year, I’ll be focusing on international cinema, especially directorial debuts. The Frameline programmers have a gift for finding the promising first films of new directors. In recent years, Frameline has presented Marion Desseigne-Ravel’s French coming-of-age story Besties, Marius Olteanu‘s innovative Romanian drama Monsters.(sic), Leon Le’s groundbreaking Vietnamese romance Song Lang, and Arantxa Echevarria’s Spanish sexual awakening tale Carmen y Lola. Last year, Frameline hosted the North American premiere of the third feature by Brazilian auteur Juliana Rojas, Cidade; Campo.
In this year’s program, I’ve already found some gems from Croatia and Taiwan – and a wowzer from France. Just before the fest opens, I’ll be coming back with specific recommendations.
Dylan O’Brien and James Sweeney in James Sweeney’s TWINLESS. Photo by Greg Cotten. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
Frameline, the oldest and longest-running LGBTQ+ film festival in the world, opens tomorrow, June 19 and runs through June 29. The program includes over 120 screenings from around the globe, curated from over 1,600 submissions and invitations. Frameline films will be presented in San Francisco’s Roxie Theater, the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, the Herbst Theatre and the Vogue Theatre, and Oakland’s The New Parkway Theater.
As always, Frameline’s program is very rich. I’ve selected three films to highlight – two highly inventive nuggets from international cinema and the restoration of a groundbreaker.
Gondola: This charming comedy is the work of a unique filmmaker, German writer-director Veit Helmer, who has been making dialogue-free films in Central Asian nations for a decade. A gondola links two mountainsides in rural Georgia, and the two female gondola operators fall in love as they pass each other over the valley. It’s remarkable how Helmer is able to pack so many story elements into a film without dialogue. (I also love Helmer’s The Bra, which I tagged as just your average silent Azerbaijani comedy.) Gondola is ever funny, sweet and imaginative.
Bruna Linzmeyer and Mirella Façanha in CIDADE; CAMPO. Courtesy of Frameline.
Cidade; Campo: Frameline hosts the North American premiere of this third feature by Brazilian auteur Juliana Rojas, which won her the Encounters Best Director prize at the Berlinale. There are two female-centered stories of relocation between city and countryside. One woman, forced from her rural home by a flood, moves to Sao Paolo with her sister and her vulnerable, floundering grandson; she takes an office cleaning job and joins her so-workers to push for better conditions. In the other story, a woman inherits her estranged father’s farm and moves to the sticks with her partner. She discovers that he was working with ayahuasca in an impossible business climate. The lengthy, robust sex scene will be talked about, both for its duration and its body positivity. Rojas anchors each story in in often harsh reality, but but explores grief by dotting them with the supernatural.
Guinevere Turner and V.S. Brodie in GO FISH. Courtesy of Frameline.
Go Fish: This pioneering lesbian classic by writer-director Rose Troche and writer-star Guinevere Turner exploded at the 1994 Sundance. Funded by Frameline’s Completion Fund Grant, a new 4K restoration will screen at the Palace of Fine Arts to celebrate its 30th anniversary. (BTW, if you get a chance to see the new doc Chasing Chasing Amy, not at Frameline, Guinevere Turner discusses the Go Fish experience at Sundance.) Both Troche and Turner are expected to appear at the Frameline screening.
There are over 100 other offerings in the Frameline48 program. Peruse the program and purchase tickets at Frameline48. Here’s the trailer for Gondola.
Photo caption: Patricia Highsmith in LOVING HIGHSMITH. Courtesy of Frameline.
In the revelatory biodoc Loving Highsmith, documentarian Eva Vitija reveals intimate perspectives on the iconic author. Patricia Highsmith’s novels were turned into twisted movie thrillers that include Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and all the Tom Ripley movies, as well as the queer memoir Carol.
Vitija has sourced Loving Highsmith with the firsthand memories of Highsmith’s last live-in lover Marijean Meaker, her Berlin lover Tabea Blumenshein, her Paris friend Monique Buffet, and members of Highsmith’s rodeo-focused Texas family. The insights include:
Highsmith’s Texas roots.
Her heartbreakingly one-way relations with her mother.
The origin of the Tom Ripley character.
Her intentionality in crafting the ending of Carol.
Her obsession with her married secret London lover.
Even those who are familiar with Highsmith will be impressed with this 360-degree portrait. I screened Loving Highsmith for this year’s Frameline in June; it’s now in theaters.
San Francisco’s Frameline —the world’s largest LGBTQ film festival—opens today and runs through Sunday, June 26, 2022. Last week, I previewed the fest, and, today, here are my recommendations:
Besties: This stellar French coming-of-age film is a showcase for star Lina Al Arabi’s magnetism and writer-director Marion Desseigne-Ravel’s storytelling.
Loving Highsmith::This biodoc of the iconic novelist Patricia Highmith (Strangers on a Train, Carol) is filled with intimacies revealed.
The Sixth Reel: This endearing madcap comedy is set in the insular world of classic movie geeks – with a touch of drag.
Unidentified Objects: This Odd-Couple-On-A-Roadtrip dramedy takes us on a singular journey – from the offbeat through the surreal to the redemptive.
I love the tagline to this year’s Frameline: The Coast Is Queer. If you can’t make it to the theaters, The Sixth Reel and Unidentified Objects are streaming in Frameline’s Digital Streaming Room. Buy tickets at Frameline.
Patricia Highsmith in LOVING HIGHSMITH. Courtesy of Frameline.
Photo caption: Lina Al Arabi and Esther Esther Bernet-Rollande in BESTIES. Courtesy of Frameline.
The absorbing coming of age drama Besties is set among Algerian teen girls in a hardscrabble immigrant urban French neighborhood. They’re growing up on the streets with minimal supervision by their hard-working single moms, and even their modest aspiration of a day trip to the beach seems beyond their grasp.
Yet, despite her downtrodden circumstances, the spirited Nedjima (Lina Al Arabi) is especially comfortable in her own skin. Supremely confident, she leads her girl squad, athletically matches up with the boys, and can talk trash like an NBA player.
Lina Al Arabi in BESTIES. Courtesy of Frameline.
Nedjima is fascinated by Zina (Esther Bernet-Rollande), a new girl in the hood, with relatives in a rival crew. Although Nedjima and Zina are on different sides (as in Sharks/Jets, Montagues/Capulets), there are attracted to each other and begin a secret romance.
Suddenly, Nedjima’s own identity is rocked – she never imagined that she could be a lesbian. This may be France, but even the kids in this insular immigrant community are homophobic. Suddenly she’s lost her community status and her support group. She reveals to Zina what teens often feel and never say, “I’m afraid of everything.” How is Nedjima going to recover her own agency and navigate being lesbian in her family and neighborhood?
Esther Bernet-Rollande (center) in BESTIES. Courtesy of Frameline.
Besties’ two leads, Al Arabi and Bernet-Rollande are very charismatic. Al Arabi’s performance could be star-making. Her Nedjima registers strength and vulnerability, wilfulness and confusion, and the audience is on her side all the way.
Besties is the first feature for writer-director Marion Desseigne-Ravel, and it’s an impressive debut. The milieu seems absolutely authentic. Besties is briskly paced, and Desseigne-Ravel tells her story economically and powerfully, without a single false moment. The final shot captures the briefest of glances, the perfect culmination of Nedjima’s story.
Besties is a showcase for Al Arabi’s magnetism and Desseigne-Ravel’s storytelling. Bestiesscreens at Frameline on June 19.
