Queer Resistance - News - Festival QUEER

August 21

Queer Resistance

The programme that last year was presented at Queer Lisboa and Queer Porto, focusing on a cinema of resistance from politically and socially troubled territories, is back at both festivals this year with a set of new titles. Given the current rise of the far-right in Western democracies, which calls into question democratic principles themselves, as well as the setback it represents for the acquired rights of minority communities - whether they are queer, racialised, migrants, precarious, among other groups - it became extremely important for our programming team to elevate Queer Resistance to a section status, not only as a vehicle for promoting these films, but also as a platform for denunciation and awareness. Thus, in Lisbon and Porto, a session will be dedicated to Palestine, with free admission, with the same screening of the short film programme ‘No Pride in Genocide’, curated by the Queer Cinema for Palestine collective. The programme features works whose aesthetic, narrative and inventive diversity evoke Palestinian culture and its place in history, its diaspora, and inevitably the criminal genocide taking place today in Gaza.

Two feature films complete the Lisbon programme. From the US comes Chase Joynt's documentary State of Firsts, a portrait of Sarah McBride's historic race to become the first trans member of the United States Congress, the backlash that followed, and her struggle for change amid increasingly intense political extremism. Premiered at this year's Rotterdam film festival, from Iran comes the fiction The Crowd, Sahand Kabiri’s debut feature, a courageous film shot in Tehran about the importance of community and networks of affection among young people, while celebrating rave culture, a fundamental place for meeting, sharing and expressing identities. Following the screening of the film, on 23rd September at 6 pm in Sala 2 of Cinema São Jorge, a talk will take place with the artistic collective Planeta Manas, who will discuss these same issues and their experience and challenges in organising their parties and activities in Lisbon.

In the Queer Porto programme – which repeats ‘No Pride in Genocide’ (Queer Cinema for Palestine) and The Crowd – we turn to that other geography of Eastern Europe, with two documentaries in which performative creation is not merely a weapon of expression, but a form of survival. With a strong focus on mental health issues and how they are the result of complex personal and familial equations, Kristina Nikolova's In Hell with Ivo introduces us to one of these rare personalities, the Bulgarian performer and composer Ivo Dimchev. Between Sofia and New York, the documentary reveals Ivo's weaknesses and strengths, the political clash with his parents in Bulgaria and his creative process. Above all, Ivo works and lives with an ever-growing desire to find peace within an increasingly adverse external context. Arriving from Ukraine, Queens of Joy was born out of the friendship between director Olga Gibelinda and Diva Monroe, one of the country's oldest drag queens, active since the 1990s. Following the experiences of Diva – who today identifies as a trans woman – and two other drag queens, Marlene and Aura, the documentary shows the importance of these queer spaces where they perform, which take on a new dimension in a context of war.

New titles announced:

QUEER RESISTANCE / QUEER LISBOA 29

The Crowd, Sahand Kabiri (Iran, 2025, 70’)

State of Firsts, Chase Joynt (USA, 2025, 93’)

“No Pride in Genocide” (Queer Cinema for Palestine):

a tangled web drowning in honey, Hannah Hull, Tara Hakim (Canada, 2023, 10’)

Abgad Hawaz, Robin Riad (Canada, 2024, 2’)

Aliens in Beirut, Raghed Charabaty (Lebanon, Canada, 2025, 17’)

Blood like Water, Dima Hamdan (Palestine, 2023, 14’)

Don’t Take My Joy Away, Omar Gabriel (Lebanon, 2024, 7’)

I Never Promised You a Jasmine Garden, Teyama Alkamli (Canada, 2023, 20’)

Out of Gaza, Jannis Osterburg, Seza Tiyara Selen (Germany, 2025, 9’)
Palcorecore, Dana Dawud (Palestine, 2023, 6’)

QUEER RESISTANCE / QUEER PORTO 11: