After Roze Filmdagen – Amsterdam’s LGBTQ Film Festival was sadly cancelled in 2020, it is now back with a wonderful selection of films featuring lesbian, bisexual, queer, and transgender stories.
This is our list of the WLW films being showcased at this festival. Tickets are available to purchase online now! Here is a link to their online ticketshop according to their packed screening schedule running from 11 March to 21st March 2021. Each film will be available to view via their online cinema. The shorts programs are viewable on demand, whilst the features and documentaries will only be available at the time shown in the timetable.
However, all the online screenings can only be viewed from within the Netherlands. For those of us outside the Netherlands we shall have to look longing at these films and wait with bated breath until they come to a film festival or platform available to us.
For any filmmakers and distributors out there, Lesflicks would love to give your film a regional or global home!
THE LESBIAN, BISEXUAL & TRANSGENDER WOMEN FILMS
AT ROZE FILMDAGEN 2021
ALICE JÚNIOR
Brazil 2019, 87 min, Gil Baroni
This bubbly and fresh teen comedy tells the story of Alice, a 17 year old internet sensation and teenage transgender girl, full of life and with a lot of personality! Do you remember your first kiss? I bet you do. And would it turn into a good story? So imagine the first kiss of a trans teenager, who leaves the big city and moves to a conservative small town in the south of Brazil, and is registered in a school that seems to have come out of the dark ages.
AYANEH
Switzerland 2019, 15 min, Nicolas Greinacher
A young refugee from Afghanistan meets a girl in a swimming pool.
BABYDYKE
BREAK IN
USA 2020, 16 min, Alyssa Lerner
Nousha enlists her best friend to delete an erotic text sent by accident.
BETWEEN THE SEAONS
South Korea 2018, 98 min, Kim Junsik
Hae-soo a woman with a past befriends a student who visits her coffeeshop. The student is secretly in love with the shop owner. What is Hae-Soo hiding?
COCOON
Germany 2020, 95 min, Leoni Krippendorff
Nora, a shy 14-year-old Berlin girl, will never forget this way too hot summer. Surrounded by people with disrupted biographies, from different cultures and backgrounds, she makes her way into adulthood. Nora falls in love with another girl, learns to stand up for herself and gets her heart broken for the first time.
DATING AMBER
Ireland 2020, 90 min, David Freyne
This outrageous 1990s-set satire centers on closeted queer high-schoolers Eddie and Amber, who hatch a perfect plan to get their bullies and families off of their backs. They pretend to date each other and become each other’s beards! What follows is a funny, moving, and soul-searching film about growing up gay in a homophobic society. This tale of queer kinship features a wonderful sense of visual comedy and an outcast dynamic which successfully shows the deep power of friendship.
FORGOTTEN ROADS
Chile 106 min, 71 min, Nicol Ruiz Benavidez
Claudina is a traditional woman from the countryside. After the passing of her husband, she gets into a lonely routine. Experiencing economic difficulty, Claudina has to move in with her dearest grandson, and her daughter, knowing that she has a strained relationship with the latter. While living there Claudina meets their neighbor Elsa, an independent and married woman who sings in a hidden bar. Claudina starts a relationship with Elsa and falls in love.
FROG CATCHER
USA 2020, 18 min, Reina Higashitani
A complex love story from an era when law prohibited women from wearing pants.
GLUE
England 2019, 4 min, Eleanor Capaldi
A woman meets her ex for the first time after their break up.
HAPPY ENDING
Denmark 2019, 93 min, Hella Joof
A romantic comedy about the beauty of ageing. After Peter’s retirement, Peter and Helle split up. They each set out on a journey of discovery filled with problems and dreams.
I KNOW HER
USA 2019, 3 min, Fawzia Mirza
After sex talk; these girls have something in common.
KISS ME BEFORE IT BLOWS UP
Germany / Israël 2020, 105 min, Shirel Peleg
A subversive love story between clashing cultures and families, KISS ME BEFORE IT BLOWS UP is a romantic misadventure crossing all borders. When two generations of Israeli women fall for a German woman and a Palestinian man, chaos follows.
LOVE, SPELLS AND ALL THAT
Turkey 2019, 96 min, Ümit Ünal
After not having seen each other for 20 years, two women are reunited on the small Turkish island where, as teenagers, they first fell in love. What is the mysterious force that binds them together after all this time? And what can they do about it?
JEUNE JULIETTE
Canada 2019, 97 min, Anne Émond
In this rousing comedy, Juliette and her best (and only) friend Léane don’t like gym class. Actually, they don’t really try at all. Rather, they skip class, talk trash about the other kids and host a radio show that everyone complains about – but they don’t care. She befriends an autistic boy, and together they form an irresistible outsider’s alliance. Trouble brews when Léane falls in love with Juliette… Colourful, kooky and cool.
MADRID – ESTOCOLMO
Spain 2019, 19 min, Antonio Ledesma Vila / Carmen Kaltchev Soto
Night falls in Madrid, Eva and Maria cross paths.
NIMBY
Finland 2020, 95 min, Teemu Nikki
Mervi has been together with Kata for a year, and now they are encouraged by the circumstances to come out of the closet. When they do, Mervi realizes that she’s not the only one in her family with secrets as her parents have been living in an open-bisexual-swinger-relationship for 20 years. On the other hand Kata is pretty surprised to learn she might be living with a girl who once was straight, and dating a Neo-Nazi. The ex-boyfriend can’t accept that Mervi is now with a person both of ‘wrong’ color and sex. The real threat appears when Kata’s parents arrive from Berlin and the local skinhead boss finds out that a black Muslim celebrity politician has come to town, in this zany black comedy.
QUEERING THE SCRIPT
Canada 2019, 93 min, Gabrielle Zilkha
Queerness on television has moved from subtext, in series such as Xena: Warrior Princess, to all- out multi season relationships between women, as seen on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost Girl, and Carmilla. But things still aren’t perfect. In 2016, a record number of queer women died on fictional shows, which broke the hearts of queer fans and launched a successful fight for better, more diverse LGTBQ representation. This fast-paced history-doc of queer women’s representation of contemporary television not only charts the evolution of queerness, but also demonstrates the extraordinary impact of activism on its many diverse fans, ensuring that they see themselves accurately portrayed on screen.
SAME BUT DIFFERENT: A TRUE NEW ZEALAND LOVE STORY
New Zealand 2019, 95 min, Nikki Su’ulepa
True love story about director Nikki Si’ulepa and producer Rachel Aneta Wills, who first meet at a film festival. Cupid strikes in the most unexpected places!
SHIVA BABY
USA 2020, 77 min, Emma Seligman
Sex and family awkwardly intertwine when a college student runs into her ex girlfriend and into her sugar daddy at a Jewish funeral service, in this provocative and droll examination of relationships in the hook-up culture of the digital age. A caustically affectionate comedy about tightly knit families and communities, and the comfort and anguish they’re often responsible for.
THEIR HAPPINESS
(a felicidade delas)
Brazil 2019, 14 min, Carol Rodrigues
Two women run from the police after a women’s march.
THE PASSING
2019, 15 min, Nichola Wong
A mortician has a difficult day at work.
THE BOOTH
India 2018, 5 min, Rohin Raveendran Nair
Forbidden romance inside a female frisking booth.
THROUGH THE GLASS DARKLY
USA 2020, 103 min, Lauren Fash
A year after Charlie’s daughter disappears, another girl from Elrod, Georgia goes missing. Convinced there is a connection, Charlie draws suspicion and contempt from local law enforcement and townspeople as she stops at nothing to expose its most devastating and darkest secret.
VLINDERS
Netherlands 2020, 23 min, Liza Koifman
A lonely prostitute finds support in a single, drug dealing mother.
Of course, this is only a small selection of the entire Roze Filmdagen 2021 schedule. There are also a wide variety of other films featuring gay, queer, trans, and intersex storylines. The programme is as diverse as our LGBTQ+ community.
You can see the full programme here: https://rozefilmdagen.nl/programma
ABOUT ROZE FILMDAGEN
The Roze Filmdagen (meaning “Pink Film Days”) is the longest running and largest film festival for LGBTQ films in the Netherlands.
The festival is programmed by Werner Borkes, Simone Korver, Paul Roeland and led by Festival Director, Werner Borkes.
Click here for the official website: rozefilmdagen.nl
