Programme 2023 – English

Robert is 19 years old and has just moved to Norway as a migrant worker. In a fish factory he wants to earn the money his mother so desperately needs. He hides the fact that he is gay from his colleagues for fear of their reaction and because of the bad experiences he had in Poland. But then he falls in love with Ivar, the factory owner’s adopted son, who is openly gay and also perfoms as a drag queen. At the same time, there is an industrial dispute in the fish factory – because of the many violations of occupational safety and health, the workers decide to unionise and go on strike. In the end, Robert has to decide whether he wants to be come part of the exploitative system or stand by his love for Ivar.

The documentary follows two intersex people as they search for themselves. Sharon-Rose (she/ her) used to compete in beauty pageants and now works as a manager in a pharma ceutical company. She only found out as an adult that she has XY chromosomes and there fore cannot have biological children, leading to an identity crisis for her. Dimakatso (they/them) was born with ambiguous genitalia and assigned female. They underwent multiple surgeries when they were a child, but the records of this can no long er be found. The film not only provides insights into the struggles of the protagonists, but also into South African society: into the widening gap between rich and poor, into strictly heteronormative Evangelical church communities, into the rituals of shamans, into families with rather conser vative gender role norms and last but not least, the harsh reality of beauty pageants.

Who I Am Not is the directorial debut of the Romanian actress Tünde Skovrán and this year won the QueerScope Debut Film Award, which is endowed with 5,000 euros. The film combines classic elements of a documentary with dreamlike, symbolic sequences and thus introduces the audience to a group of people who otherwise often remain invisible even within the LGBTQIA+ community.

England, 1988: Clause 28, passed by the Thatcher government, is in force in Great Britain. By law, homosexuality can only be spoken of negatively in schools and local authorities. Jean is a physical education teacher at a school and a lesbian. At school she regularly lies about her private life, as she doesn’t want her colleagues to know that she has a girl friend and that she regularly goes to queer bars.Hintergrund der queerfeindlichen Stimmung im Großbritannien der späten Achtzigerjahre und stellt moralische Fragen, auf die es keine einfachen Antworten gibt. One evening she meets her student Lois there. Jean knows that she could lose her job if her homosexuality became public. Things get even more precarious when Lois is accused of kissing a classmate against her will at school. The film tells personal stories against the backdrop of anti-queer sentiment in late 1980s Britain and raises moral questions with no easy answers.

Koko Da Doll, Liyah Mitchell, Daniella Carter and Dominique Silver are trans, black and sex workers. In Kokomo City, they talk openly about sex work and their bodies, but also reflect on their origins, their position in society and the danger they are constantly in as trans sex workers. Director D. Smith, who is herself trans, gets very close to her protagonists and stages them in glamorous black and white.

Kokomo City has won various audience awards, including the Panorama Audience Award at the Berlinale and the NEXT Audience Award at the Sundance Festival.