OUTrageous. OUTspoken. And OUTstanding is the theme for the Miami Edition of OUTshine. which runs from April 18 – 28, 2024. The festival started in 1998 an serves as a platform for numerous premiers and is the largest LGBTQ+ cultural arts event in South Florida. Its a hybrid festival with a diverse program of in-person screenings, and a schedule og mvies online that can be accessed in Florida.
OUTshine is one of Queerguru’s hometown Film Fests and we are very proud to be a Media Sponsor of the event. We have had our team of Reviewer to scour the entire program and the result is
QUEERGURU’S TOP PICK OF MUST SEE MOVIES
A House Is Not A Disco is filmmaker Brian J Smith’s love letter to Fire Island and takes a deep dive into the Fire Pines community of today. Smith details one six-month season on the island, from its opening up in April, the build-up to the annual Pines Party on the beach fundraiser, through to the closing Halloween party at the end of October. We follow a bunch of residents, both long-term and new, as well as business owners, house-sharers, drag performers and the organisers of the Pines Party. The resulting documentary is an interesting, eye-opening profile of one of the most iconic queer places on the planet.
CHUCK CHUCK BABY : is love better the second time around? This whimsical musical comedy drama is set in a small town in North Wales where Helen lives with her ex-husband, his 20-year-old girlfriend, their new baby – and his dying mother Gwen. Her life is a grind, and like all the other women she toils with at the local chicken factory, is spent in service of the clock.
Listen Up! (Hor Her’a’) is a brilliant comedy drama debut film from Iranian director Kaveh Tehrani. It takes a deep dive into immigrant life and the challenges of forming your identity as a young powerless person in a traditionally Muslim religious family, whilst living in a liberal western country. How will the family cope with this? Based on Gulraiz Sharif’s novel of the same name, Listen Up! energetically explores issues such as identity, class, poverty, integration, gender, patriarchy and family through the lens of a fifteen-year-old. The often-heavy subject matter is, however, covered in a very easy, humorous manner which makes the story-telling easy to digest.
Mad About The Boy : The Noel Coward Story : was a playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, and one of the wittiest flamboyant men of his generation. Barnaby Thompson‘s compelling and affectionate portrait of one of the greatest quintessential English man of the first half of the last century is such a sheer joy to view. Noel Coward, universally known as The Master was a closeted gay man but In 1966 his customary reticence and played an explicitly homosexual character in A Song at Twilight.The daring piece earned Coward new critical praise, and was just one year before Sexual Offences Act 1967 in the UK was passed finally legalizing homosexuality.. Then on is 7Oth birthday (in 1970) Coward was finally knighted and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the same year received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement UNMISSABLE
Italian director Alessandro Guida has created a rarely successful sequel with Mascarpone: The Rainbow Cake. You don’t need to have seen the first film to enjoy the second. Quintessential Italian style, emotions, color and humor combine with a handsome cast, beautiful lighting, a multi-layered plot and a gentle soundtrack to give a very entertaining feature on the quest for love. Strong casting includes the return of comedian Michela Giraud who plays Antonio’s feisty, pragmatic accountant and Francesco Gheghi who plays Ricky, a troubled youth from the refuge who comes to work with Antonio and Luca. An interesting, entertaining study in following our hearts through the fog of nostalgia. Where does the past belong?
Written and directed by Benjamin Howard, Riley is a beautiful coming-of-age tale set in contemporary, suburban Southern California. Howard’s feature-length drama is an impressive, authentic debut. Based on his own experiences as a high-school athlete who’s not out yet, Howard has been able to draw on all those angst-ridden situations we face as closeted teenagers. The cast are very strong. As well as an impressive Jake Holley as Riley, Colin McCalla plays Jayden, Riley’s sexy, macho roommate who’s straight but quite relaxed about mutual jerk-off sessions.
SEBASTIAN. Writers are always advised to ‘Write about what you know.’ Aspiring twenty-five-year-old Scottish writer Max, (the handsome Ruaridh Mollica), is living in London and working on his first novel, a story about a sex-worker, Sebastian. He’s good-looking and ambitious, energetically forging his career and soul. To improve the authenticity of his work he creates an online escort profile and starts seeing clients himself, as his alter-ego Sebastian, and writes about each gig afterward. His potential publisher is impressed with his work, which he credits to interviews with sex workers. This third feature from Finnish Mikko Måkelå, confirms him as one of the most exciting queer filmmakers today
A stunning debut film by Fawzia Mirza The Queen of My Dreams whose human insights are entertainingly luminous. For a film that is set around the death of a father and husband and the funeral that follows it, The Queen of My Dreams is so fresh, and super saturated in color that its vim, sparkle, and humor cannot help but shine through. The conflict between a mother and a daughter is shown, but rather than trudge predictably towards reconciliation the more interesting story of the parallels between their lives is shown.
THROUPLE : A throuple, or menage a trois as the French call it, is defined in the dictionary as “a relationship between three people characterized as balanced, committed, and non-hierarchical. “Three” + “couple” = “throuple” — and that’s called queer math. It however should not be confused with a threesome which is only about sex.
Michael (screenwriter Michael Doshier) chance encounter at a club one night with a gay couple (Tommy Heleringer and Stanton Plummer-Cambridge) who have an ‘open marriage’ and this is about to change everything. There is an immediate physical attraction between the three of them, but also a very definite mutual hesitancy on how they should proceed. Greyson Horst’s movie delightfully surprises us with the journey the story takes and keeps us totally invested to the final scene (which you will not want to miss).
TURTLES : Divorce rates for couples over fifty have increased in recent decades, largely because it’s now more socially acceptable to be a single older person, and also because more older people are now financially and emotionally independent. Turtles, a new Belgian/Canadian comedy-drama by David Lambert, examines what happens when Brussels couple Thom (Dave Johns) and Henri’s (Olivier Gourmet) 35 -year romantic relationship breaks down. Lambert’s quirky comedy take a deep dive into long-term queer relationships. Over 60s queers are often sidelined in film so it’s refreshing to see this demographic take centre stage, albeit not always in the most positive light.
OUTshine: Miami's LGBTQ+ FILM FEST
will begin on 4/18 and
end on 4/24. To see the whole
program and book tickets check out https://outshinefilm.com
OUTshine: Miami's LGBTQ+ FILM FEST
will begin on 4/18 and
end on 4/24. To see the whole
program and book tickets check out for full reviews on over 1800 queer films check out www.queerguru.com and whilst you are there be sure to subscribe to get all the latest raves and rants on queer cinema ...best of all its FREE
Labels: 2024, Miami's LGBTQ Film Festival, must see, OUTshine, Top Picks
