Shorts Competition on QueerFest

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Within the festival, the movie screenings will take place between January 14 - 21 in Ankara and January 22 - 24 in İstanbul.

Within the competition, short queer movies from Sweden to Thailand will be screened during the Festival. QueerFest will award a prize money for the winner besides an opportunity of participation for the director of the movie to Cannes Film Festival or Berlin Film Festival.

The selection jury for the queer shorts competition is composed of screenwriter and director Ümit Ünal, Director of Oslo/Fusion International Film Festival Brad Ydén, and board member of Altyazi publication, film critique Gözde Onaran.

12 Movies in The Queer Shorts Competition are;

• 09:55 – 11:05, Ingrid Ekman, Bergsgatan 4b (2015), Director: Cristine Berglund & Sophie Vukovic

67-year-old Ingrid has decided to deal with cancer on her own. She retreats from the outside world and it retreats from her - apart from sporadic visits from the home care services. But then home care employee Frida knocks on her door and awakens feelings that Ingrid can't shut out.

• Wannan Kong Duen (That Day of The Month) (2014), Director: Jirassaya Wongsutin

Goy and Lee, two 12th-grade girls, are best friends who always sit next to each other in the classroom.

Right on schedule, the girls’ periods always arrive at the same time every month, until now.

• San Cristóbal (2015), Director: Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo

Lucas and Antonio. Two young men meet and fall in love in a remote fishing village in the south of Chile. One lives there, the other is visiting. Sensuality dictates the pace of the narrative and the lives of both in the days to follow: being one another’s mirror. Recognising one another. Yielding to one another. When the village rebels against their love, the experience of this limitation marks a momentous step in Lucas’ and Antonio’s adulthood. A simple story of love and devotion, shot in the style of Direct Cinema. A not-so-simple setting, in Chile’s Deep South, where anything that breaks out of the perceived norm is to be destroyed immediately, punished. The characters know of the limitations within the village. The romantic notion of resistance is brief; of greater importance are life and the love that is found. Going further. Going beyond the self.

• En Eftermiddag (An Afternoon) (2014), Director: Søren Green

Director Søren Green’s new short film is an exploration of nascent sexuality. Mathias and Frederik are two friends who spend an afternoon together; Mathias has decided that this is the time to tell Frederik that he is in love with him. But when the time comes, he is still scared to make the first move. It’s an afternoon that can change their lives forever, but is Mathias ready to make that change?

• Hole (2014), Director: Martin Edralin

Hole, is a moving look at Billy, a disabled middle-aged-man searching for some intimacy in the world around him. Directed by Martin Edralin, the short is going to push the boundaries of some viewers, but it’s a moving message about the challenges that everybody may face. Toronto Film Scene had a chance to speak with Martin about the film, and about what he wants his body of work to explore.

• Phoria (2015), Director: Forrest Lotterhos

It is an intimate portrayal of five AFAB (assigned female at birth) transgender people. On the basis of interviews with five transgender persons, the production of Forrest Lotterhos runs a deep and effective discussion on identity, gender and body.

• Det bor inga bögar i Bollebygd (The Moment That Passed) (2015), Director: Mikael Bundsen

In a small town in Sweden, twenty-something Nicolas meets up with some friends for some bowling after work. In the bowling alley he sees someone whom he has not seen for a long time. A film about courage and coming to terms with the past, about chances once had and never took, chances that, deep inside, one wishes one could have again.

• A Qui La Faute (No Matter Who) (2015), Director: Anne-Claire Jaulin

It's summertime and a troop of young girls are headed to scout camp. For Marie and Lise, it is the time of their first sparks of emotion, a time to learn more about desire and how one confronts a group and their morality.

• Code Academy (2014), Director: Nisha Ganatra

In the future, the gender disparity gap was addressed with a radical idea: to keep boys and girls separate until the age of 18. In this society, The Equal Futures Academy for Girls and the Equal Futures Academy for Boys were formed to re-educate the two genders without the inherent biases of society. The Equal Futures Academy propels more girls into the arena of captains of technology than any other school in the world. Frankie, Libby and Sheridan of the Girls Who Code are a premiere coterie of students with brains, beauty and binary bravado. The expert hackers have found a way to interact with the boys from their sister school and trouble ensues. Code Academy is a peek into the inner world of adolescence, gender identity formation and the role of cyber-space in this tumultuous time of growth.

• The Future Perfect (2015), Director: Nick Citton

A time travel movie that takes place in the space between then and now. One man is hired to do a job that makes him question every impulse in his body, until he sees a future he cannot unlearn. A sparse, minimalist sci-fi story about the endless nature of grief HE FUTURE PERFECT is a minimalist time-travel story that centers on the relationship between a hired gun, HARDESTY and his boss, GREENWOOD. As the film unfolds, we come to understand that a major crisis in the future, has its origins in a minor moment from the past. The location: a train platform in 1968. The target: A 9-year-old boy who is destined to be patient zero of a horrible virus. The moral dilemma Hardesty faces plays out, somewhere between now and then, as he defends the boy’s life, against his longtime partner, Greenwood. But when Greenwood reveals a secret about who Hardesty will become, the argument takes a turn

• La Meteos des Plages (The Strand) (2014), Director: Aude Léa Rapin

Two women who love each other and want to have a child together ask their best friend to help them. He agrees, even if, or perhaps because, he has recently confessed to his partner that he doesn’t feel ready to become a father. He is to give his friends this gift during a weekend away in the middle of unspoiled nature, where the three of them can be alone, face to face with expectations and guilt. A film about the landscape, which is also a very human story: taking a break in the calm of nature brings emotions to the surface, which the director successfully portrays with grace and sincerity. A time and a place that turn three lives upside down, or simply give form to genuine feelings, which are, as a result, both sorrowful and joyful.

• Vintage Porn – Part I (2014), Director: Emre Busse & Burak Erkil

Kübra is a 26 year old sex worker and performance artist based in Istanbul. Following her vocal and artistic education, Kübra fashioned a sumptuous environment for us to question our sexualities through her persona and invites us to analyse the concepts of work, labor and art through pornography.

(ÇT/DG)