A filmmaker receives a particularly vehement “fan” e-mail. Despite the derogatory tone and hackneyed sentiment, the email inspires a fantasy island, a technicolored homeland, a homo-utopia that momentarily enhances the pristine, minimal, frozen landscape of North Alberta, Canada.

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Is it possible to really ‘be seen’ and fall in love amidst the chaotic big-city grind of bars and bullshit? Andrew Haigh’s beautifully shot drama makes a good play at answering the question without descending into schmaltzy romcom or Hollywood artifice. Russell’s night begins ordinarily enough — at his straight mate’s house party, then on to a gay club where he meets Glen -– and it all gets far more interesting. Out comes a tape recorder, Glen starts recording their thoughts on sex, armpits, love, coming out and friendship. It’s the start of a weekend of firsts and, as they spend more time together, the barriers come down, masks fall and nonchalance turns to regard -– for each other and the future. Haigh’s fly-on-the-wall shooting style gives his film the air of authenticity and makes Russell and Glens’ journey all the more real. It has a gentleness to it as well, a kindness that helps get across Haigh’s idea that we’re all looking for something honest, whatever that may be and wherever we may look for it.

Courtesy of the British Council.

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In the 70s San Francisco’s Castro was a dream come true for gay and lesbian Americans. It’s epitomised freedom of sex, love, association, style and action that so many had been searching for. Then, in the 80s people started dying of a mysterious disease. We Were Here is a highly personal, no-frills account of how a debilitating illness, that was eventually labelled AIDS, devastated this free-wheeling neighbourhood and mobilised it into a supportive, caring community of activists. Straightforward testimonies come from five Castro residents: a visual artist, a nurse, a flower seller, a shy Shanti carer and an activist. Each one lost friends, lovers and partners during the first few years. The forceful combination of personal accounts from the survivors, including their own photographs, additional archive footage, and contemporary news coverage of the spread of the “gay plague”, tells a haunting, yet positive and important story. Simply, it recounts how the initial terror, loss, confusion, and the ensuing paranoia were gradually supplanted by systematic research, selfless humanity and a renewed sense of community.

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Two friends, ex-college housemates, decide to have a gayby. There’s only one problem – a real gayby has two gay parents and Jenn is straight. Not only that, but she wants to conceive the old fashioned way. A hilarious bedroom scene, some pithy truisms and an undertow of refreshing honesty make this film a real little miracle.

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Two couples, one goal – a baby. All four get together for an evening of sex, turkey basting, champagne and ‘conception cake’. Things however are not so easy when you’re out of your comfort zone – and underwear. Will that kid ever get made? Delightful fun.

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South Africa has a most advanced Constitution, it promulgates equal rights for all. Despite this progress, when it comes to adoption – lesbian couples are at the bottom of the priority list. Waited For weaves three personal stories of adoption. Inter-racial couple Kelly and Leigh-Ann embark on the journey to adopt a baby. For a year they let old-fashioned socialcrats vet their house, relationship and cultural sensitivities, and wait for the phone to ring. New Zealander Pip and South African Lee have two adopted daughters that have introduced more pink in to their lives than they were anticipating. Pip views New Zealand as an escape route, but Lee is not convinced and wants the girls to grow up in South Africa. Single mother, builder and recovering addict Paula trusts that the multiracial environment she has raised her 2-year old in won’t turn him into a “coconut”. Gentle and thoughtful, personal, yet quietly political, the film plots the various stages of the process, and the five mothers discuss their fears, joys, frustrations and expectations of adoptive motherhood in “post-race” South Africa.

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Fresh from the village, cocky, buffed, Jaime is the newest callboy in town on his way about to notch up his second assignment. Jaime becomes increasingly uncomfortable when his client insists that he “suppress” his wife and unsure as to whether this is a case of mistaken identity or an elaborate sexual fantasy.

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Beware – this is no-holds-barred film-making in the age-old French tradition of tell-it-like-it-really-fucking-is. Omar, a young filmmaker living in the Parisian projects, heads to New York for work, leaving behind the muscular Emmanuel and the remnants of their broken relationship. On different sides of the Atlantic the men react to the breakup in unique ways – Emmanuel with a succession of energetic encounters and Omar in the flirtatious company of a young film student he meets there. As Omar discovers New York and the pleasures of his new friend’s body, Emmanuel is having an altogether less tender time, including a verbally debasing episode with a crabby ‘intellectual’ john. There is an underscore of recklessness in Honoré’s film, but it’s a quiet nihilistic streak rather than an all out scream of excess, making it, if possible, yet more disturbing than it could have been. Honoré’s film is a brutal comment on the role and limitations of sex as a release and panacea, playing out against a backdrop of obsession, loss and the price of sexual freedom. It’s a film for the liberated, and Honoré is unflinchingly honesty with a knack of reaching the parts few filmmakers dare to approach.

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Who gets to choose? That’s the question behind Rotondi’s hard-hitting film as a mother and a lover square up after the death of their shared beloved. The politicking and the words hides the brutal reality – who has the right to bury their lover, live in their house and own their memory? An American reminder of a universal threat.

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In the vibrant slums of Manila lives Semmy Baisa, a community man and one-time father. He has been slowly coming out of the closet for many years. He hears of a sometimes legendary, sometimes notorious place where gay men like 80-year-old Leony and Fredericka retire and live out the last of their glamorous years. With touching trepidation, Semmy finds out if it is the place for him.

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If you liked Roger Horn’s The Sisterhood at last year’s Festival, here’s more – Lauren Beukes’ peek behind the drag curtain at Miss Gay Western Cape has echoes of Horn’s story of Hazendal farmhands Pietie, Hope and Rollie. Beukes’ boys however, come from harder neighbourhoods on the Cape Flats and it’s the contradiction of Barbie-girls-in-gangstaland that fascinate her. Preparing for the event are a host of hopefuls; Kat the Princess, Eva the Mechanic, Kayden the Pre-Op and Janet Jackson among them. Interviews reveal the real people behind the stage names, and as rehearsals in the Joseph Stone Auditorium get underway, it’s as much about the rigours of a large production – timing, focus, music cues, placement – as about the body issues common to all; will I be good enough, will the pageant take to a plus-sized person? Beukes has a novelist’s eye for detail as well as a theatrical flare, evident in her dramatic reconstructions of childhood scenes, and sneaky camerawork capturing stolen looks between backstagers. Touching, engaging, the film is ultimately a beautifully crafted ode to (re)creation, memory and courage under fire.

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The filmmaker’s mother announced the death of her daughter upon learning about his transition. Other transgender men sum it all up as they prepare for a photo-shoot.

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From Spain comes an exquisite story of second chances as Axun and Maite, two sexagenarians who meet over the hospital beds of their sick relations, rekindle a long-lost friendship. It has been 50 years since the two last saw each other, and as the film progresses, snatches of their past attachment bubble up, informing the course of their growing affection. Axun, simple, internal, unremarkable, a Karoo aunt of sorts, is married to the staid, uncomplicated Juan Mari who wants nothing more than a quiet life and regular meals from his wife. But as her friendship with Maite grows, she finds herself drawn to the openly lesbian music teacher and is less inclined to be at home tending to her taciturn husband. Axun’s two worlds must finally collide and it’s to the film’s credit that it is handled as it is, with honesty, panache and great heart. The beauty of the film is the everyday nature of the two -– this is not Aldomovarian farce or Rodriguezan excess, but an elegant everyday portrayal of affection and intimacy. Highly recommended, even for the boys.

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An initiate of an Israeli army elite corps resists being blooded with the blood of a gay man. He has another agenda.

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In Mozambique 20 million condoms are distributed to the 4 million strong sexually active adults. But along the way, untold numbers are not used for their original purpose. A funny film with a point.

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Set against a lush background of swaying palms and tropical breezes, Mortimer’s powerful drama follows the lives of two men, one black, one white, in a country not famed for its tolerance. Romeo is good looking and gay, pestered by his family in Nassau to get married and settle down. Escaping them, he heads to the more laid-back island of Eleuthera where a chance encounter puts him in the path of Johnny, a white Bahamian artist, struggling with his own issues. Also on the island is Lena, a pastor’s wife, determined to make an issue of the community’s apparent laissez-faire attitude to ‘the gay problem’. As the three intersect, lessons are learned and histories revealed, and Mortimer steers admirably clear of preachy treacle – his characters are real and believable, as are the scenarios he throws them into. As a comment on the role and influence of conservative Christianity in the Caribbean it’s a powerful piece, but its real heart is as a love story, compassionately told through an expert lens. Cinematography is first rate and the Bahamas plays a starring role – beautiful, and ugly, as it is.

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Take three hot women, a cute but nasty drug dealer, an LA setting and you have the makings of an off-beat award-winning ride to funnyville. Galia, a recreational user, nuts her dealer in his apartment with a piece of the Berlin Wall after he gets stroppy and steals her money. Panicked, she calls her best friend Sotiria to help move the body, only to be interrupted by Cardamosa, the dealer’s druggie wife who, far from grieving, takes control of clean up operations and leads the body on a zany ride around downtown LA. All this against a background of increasingly loopy users who pop in to get their fix. Director Laura Neri, winner of the best director at the LA Femme Film Festival last year, steers a successful path between front room farce and thriller, peppering the film with great one-liners and a lesbian back story that’s as sweet as the film is nutty. Throw in a circumcision, a sleepy burglar, Xanadu on Ice and a carpet-loving hobo and it all adds up to a fun evening out.

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Step Up meets To Wong Foo in a blast of leopard print, sequins and high-octane dance. It’s the musical story of lost boy Brad who, thrown out by his trailer trash mother, heads for LA’s bright lights and finds a hidden world of ‘bar dancing’ and ‘balls’ and, ultimately, a new family. But all families have their dysfunctions and when yours is a motley crew of drag/dance/performance queers named the House of Eminence, queened over by the strict Latina, things are not going to go entirely smoothly. And love gets in the way too, throwing up two suitors for Brad’s favours, the statuesque Princess Eminence and kind-hearted Carter. But all messages and dramas fade into the background as the dance, prance, strut and fly of the catwalk explodes onto the screen and the entrants ‘walk’. House of Eminence does battle with rival houses in various categories including ‘schoolboy’, ‘voguing’, ‘executive romance’ and ‘vintage prom princess’. Music by Beyonce’s music director Kim Burse and choreography by Michael Jackson’s Frank Gaston Jr. means the action is white-hot electric and it’s great to see a whole yield of new queer musical anthems emerging. Guaranteed to fill the clubs, post movie.

Africa, literally, is not for sissies and this epic documentary proves that there’s a battle to be fought as it follows the travails of five gay Africans as they try to get out -– literally and figuratively, away from homegrown prejudice, brutality and their own sense of self-doubt. For some that means moving to South Africa, bastion of supposed tolerance, for others it means risking everything in Europe. Neither place turns out to be either sanctuary or sympathetic, and the film is as much an indictment of inconsistent refugee policies as it is a personal journey of heart-breaking intensity. But it’s also a film of hope. Val, a Ugandan, refuses to put her sexuality in a box on the shelf, even if it means being separated from her lover. Tatenda, a transgendered Zimbabwean battling the refugee system in Cape Town is never in doubt of her real journey and Leon, a rent boy in Kampala, wants to begin the odyssey towards true self-understanding. But the tales of trafficking and deportation lend an air of urgency – and reality – to the film, and the United Nation’s recent resolution condemning violence and discrimination against gay people is a much needed ray of hope. See it to understand the battle.

Getting Out is produced by the Refugee Law Project with aid from the Open Society Initiative, in collaboration with the Ugandan Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law.

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