[This article appears in the March/April 2024 print issue of Boston Spirit magazine. Subscribe for free today.]
Life may begin at 40, but Wicked Queer Boston’s LGBTQ+ Film Festival, has been living large for a long time. Adventurous, eclectic, edgy programming that looks back and ahead has been a hallmark of Wicked Queer since its founding as Boston’s gay and lesbian film festival in 1984 by legendary film programmer George Mansour.
Now the fourth longest running LGBTQ+ Film Festival in North America, Wicked Queer celebrates its 40th season April 5–14 at cinemas and screening rooms throughout the Boston area including the Brattle Theatre, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Coolidge Corner Theater and the Institute of Contemporary Art.
This milestone year showcases a total of 48 features and short films from around the world with an emphasis on narratives that empower multidimensional characters. “We want to celebrate queer agency, power, history and joy,” says Shawn Cotter, the festival’s executive director. An emerging theme in this year’s edition is horror, a genre that has traditionally provided queer subtext in films and, more recently, explicit queer storytelling.
Fitting easily into that description is “Saint Drogo,” the latest from Monster Makeup, the Providence, RI-based troupe headed by Brandon Perras-Sanchez, Michael Ahern and Ryan Miller whose 2020 hometown queer slasher film, “Death Drop Gorgeous,” was a monster hit during Wicked Queer, winning the Audience Favorite award and playing in numerous festivals across the country.
With the same anarchic, irreverent, DIY spirit but with higher production values comes “Saint Drogo,” a neo-noir folk-horror film shot in the bleak off-season in Provincetown. Starring Wayne Gonsalves, Michael McAdams, Ninny Nothin and Matthew Pidge, it skewers gay culture and conformity in its creepy story about Caleb, who’s having nightmares about an ex who had been working in Provincetown but now won’t return his calls. Caleb persuades his boyfriend Adrian to drive to the Cape tip, but their search yields nothing but more sinister secrecy. Come for the murder and mayhem complete with sleazy club owners and crooked detectives, and stay for an original story that explores assimilation, addiction and codependency.
Another feature along the horror spectrum but in a more supernatural vein is writer-director Marwan Mokbel’s “The Judgement.” It’s about a gay Egyptian couple, Mo and Hisham, who return from the US to Egypt for a family emergency and have to force themselves back into the closet and pretend to be just friends. According to the press notes, they fall prey to witchcraft as punishment for their “homosexual sins.” Mo falls into religious terror and exposes his unhealed past. Witchcraft has revived childhood terrors and deep religious fears, and he is afraid that his shame will be exposed to Hisham, who doesn’t know that Mo still views their relationship as sinful. Mo’s deep dread over this judgement gradually begins to literally haunt him and leads to the confrontation he has always feared.
Other features in this year’s event include writer-director Jules Rosskam’s “Desire Lines,” a hybrid documentary that is an innovative blend of first-person interviews with transmen who are attracted to men, a fictional storyline and never-before-seen archival footage. The story centers on Iranian-American transman Ahmad who is searching for his place in history and discovering the intersecting lines of private desire and identity.
Writer-director Dominic Savage’s “Close to You” stars Elliot Page as a trans man living in Toronto who returns to his small hometown near Lake Ontario and confronts family estrangement and uneasiness.
Barnaby Thompson’s documentary “Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story,” narrated by Alan Cumming and featuring Rupert Everett as the voice of writer and wit Noël Coward, is an entertaining look at the contradictory life of one of the great artists of the 20th century.
Reem Morsi’s “Queen Tut” stars Alexandra Billings as a trans drag mother in Toronto who befriends newly arrived Egyptian immigrant Nabil (Ryan Ali) as both cope with loss and struggle for acceptance.
From Argentina is León, a film by Andi Nachon and Papu Curate starring Carla Crespo as Julia who ran a restaurant called León with her life partner who has recently died. Torn between her grief and a world that is crumbling without her, Julia struggles to preserve the restaurant the couple built together and her bond with their son, León. But that relationship is threatened by a willful grandmother and the return of an absent father. The film examines the joys and difficulties of both biological and chosen families.
The range of queer experiences, bodies and ages shows up in many films, such as the Belgian-Canadian relationship comedy “Turtles” from writer-director David Lambert.
It’s about an aging gay couple, Thom (David Johns), a former queen of the night, and Henri (Olivier Gourmet), a retired police officer. Together for 35 years, their modest life in Brussels has fallen into a comfortable pattern. But since his retirement, Henri’s days seem to stretch endlessly, each one as bland as the next, while his feelings for Thom are fading. He will do anything to save his relationship and rekindle their love, even if that means asking Henri for a divorce.
“Turtles” portrays gay characters that don’t often show up on screen. “The time has come to make an unabashed remarriage comedy between two men. Thom and Henri have a similar dynamic to Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. They bicker, they grumble, they complain, they have some really tragic, even sadly cruel moments, but the film leaves room for light, sweetness and tenderness,” Lambert writes in his director’s statement. “I want to focus on the emotional life of the characters, share intimate moments with them and transform these moments into narrative movements.”
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