The Miami Film Festival has always enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for the slate of excellent LGBTQ movies it programs. Even more important than that is the fact that they seek to include some excellent and extraordinary edgy queer cinema that really pushes the envelope. These are important movies that sadly all to often fail to get recognized by mainstream LGBT Film Festivals. This year is no exception, and so here then is queerguru’s pick of The Best of Queer Cinema at Miami Film Festival 2017.
Maybe now that the extraordinarily talented Canadian out-gay multi-award-winning filmmaker Xavier Dolan is 27 years old, we should stop referring to him as a ‘wunderkind’. This is his latest, and probably most mature movie, and is the story of writer that comes home to his fractured and troubled family to tell them that he is dying of AIDS. Dolan recruited his biggest starry cast ever with Gaspard Ulliel, Marion Cotillard, Vincent Cassel, Léa Seydoux and Nathalie Baye. As usual he picked up two Awards for the film when it premiered at Cannes Film Festival, but surprisingly the movie received polarized reactions from the Critics. Shortlisted for a Best Foreign Picture Oscar, queerguru feels that this important movie is a very definite ‘must-see’ regardless of the Critics. Or maybe because of them.
Handsome Devil : this second feature film from Irish novelist turned director John Butler was one of the best LGBT movies to premiere at Toronto International Film Festival last year. It’s the coming-0f-age story of Ned and Conor who are forced to share a bedroom at their Irish boarding school. The loner and the star athlete at this rugby-mad school form an unlikely friendship until it’s tested by the authorities.
The Hollywood Reporter wrote at the time ‘Winning performances from Fionn O’Shea and Nicholas Galitzine as odd-couple pals, plus nuanced work from a terrific Andrew Scott as a man who practices what he preaches by stepping out from the shadows, make this a feel-good “It Gets Better” tale that should speak to young audiences particularly LGBT ones.
Santa & Andres : the second feature from Cuban writer-director Carlos Lechuga is set 1n 1983 and is the tale of a rather odd-couple. Andrés who has been ostracized by the authorities for his political views and his homosexuality, and Santa who has been charged with sitting outside his isolated shack for three days woman guarding him to ensure he doesn’t disrupt a political event and gain the attention of the foreign press.
After Andres is beaten up by his lover one night, it’s Santa who tends to his wounds, saving his life, and after that, their relationship starts to alter in interesting, thought-provoking ways.
After its TIFF premiere, The Hollywood Reporter wrote : This clearly shows how far Cuban indie cinema has come of late in its criticisms — but it’s never preachy, Lechuga’s script keeping the focus tightly on the quiet human drama as both characters struggle internally with the system’s effects on them.
This second feature film from Chilean writer/director Fernando Guzzoni is one of the darkest LGBT coming-of-age stories we have ever come across. When eighteen-year-old Jesús (Nicolás Durán) is involved in a fatal hate crime he finds he can trust no-one, even his best friend-cum-lover, and he is left with no other option than to turn to his estranged father Héctor (Alejandro Goic) with whom he has always had a dysfunctional relationship until now. With a stunning performance from young Durán, this hypnotic thriller raises a number of moral questions without providing easy answers.
Alterations is a delightful 19min short movie from Miami based filmmaker Juan Carlos Zaldívar who wrote, directed and starred in it too. When J (an adolescent trans woman previously known as Jesus) told her manic depressive mother, Mary Jane, that he wanted to be a woman, her mother had a heart attack. Now in the attempt to reconnect with her amnesic mother J is making a movie to sort things out.
Miami Film Festival March 3rd – 12th 2017
