Festival Schedule
0ne Story At A Time: Celeste Lecesne
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 8th
7:30 pm
Director: Eva Tenuto & Natalia lyudin 10 minutes USA
In this docu-short, Celeste Lecesne candidly shares how he not only escaped the confines of homophobia but combatted it by finding the courage to share his truth. We see how an off-broadway solo-show becomes an Academy Award-winning film that ultimately inspires The Trevor Project, the largest suicide preventionlifeline for LGBTQIA+ youth. Now, 25 years later, countless lives have been saved and Celeste stays the course, inspiring the next generation.
BOOKED
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 8th
7:30 pm
Director: Cassie Maurer
75 minutes USA
Produced in Cincinnati, BOOKED is the hilarious feature-length comedy about two high school theatre geeks who are snubbed for the leads in their senior year musical performance. To prove their worth in the eyes of their dismissive and invalidating classmates and teacher, they audition for top college BFA Musical Theatre programs to prove they have what it takes.
Trans Heaven, Pennsylvania
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 9th
1:00 pm
Director: Hansen Bursic
12 minutes USA
In the 1970s and 1980s, the small Pennsylvania town of New Hope was among a few safe havens outside of major cities for gay men to find community. Over 30 years later, the town’s legacy remained, but now for a different community: transgender women.
Emerald City
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 9th
1:00 pm
Director: Josef Steiff
21 minutes USA
Two young men cross paths on the back roads of the American Southwest and despite their different backgrounds, find common ground along the Border.
Maurice’s Bar
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 9th
1:00 pm
Dirs: Tzor Edery & Tom Prezman
15 minutes France
In 1942, on a train to nowhere, a former drag queen remembers a night from her past in one of Paris’ first queer bars. Remnants of customer gossip recall this mythic bar and its mysterious Jewish-Algerian owner.
Lee Baby
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 9th
1:00 pm
Director: Leah Raidt
13 minutes USA
Lee, a trans man, and his wife Charlie are smack dab in the middle of creating a family. Insecurities, hormone imbalances, loss of bodily autonomy, and the exhaustion of new parenthood test the limits of this resilient queer couple.
If
Here on Earth
Here on Earth
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 9th
1:00 pm
Director: Tathagata Ghosh
25 mins India
An arranged marriage tears a lesbian couple apart, but with a mother’s love, perhaps another future is possible.
Here on Earth
Here on Earth
Here on Earth
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 9th
1:00 pm
Director: Katie Neuhof
16 minutes USA
When a writing gig goes more successful than expected, a young writer has to choose between the life he wants and the life he's been told he's supposed to have.
Safety State
Here on Earth
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 9th
1:00 pm
Dir: Jeanette L Buck
15 minutes USA
In the dystopian near future, a gay and a lesbian couple form an unlikely friendship as they flee the midwest for safety in New England. As rights are being rolled back and travel bans are going into effect, Two couples decide to leave their home in Ohio and travel East to a safety state where it is safe and legal to be queer.
Asian Bitches Speak
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 9th
3:30 pm
Director: Janet Chen Ma
16 mins USA
After generations of cultural silence, years of pandemic anxiety, and one anti-Asian hate crime, queer filmmaker Janet takes her retired single mom Diana on a mental health discovery road trip. Along the way, they spill the tea about their own family history, and start the journey to healing.
An Unexpected Community
An Unexpected Community
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 9th
3:30 pm
Director: Kathryn L. Beranich.
70 mins USA
In the early days of the pandemic, Andrea Meyerson, founder of Women On A Roll, launched an online platform for lesbians and queer women. She called it Women On The Net. Five nights a week, Meyerson provided a place for women all over the world to gather and share a wide range of entertaining programming. Feelings of isolation and loneliness were replaced with joy, laughter, and new friends - all via Zoom. An Unexpected Community captures the magic these women shared during one of the most challenging events in our lifetime. Featuring: Lily Tomlin, Kate Clinton, Meredith Baxter, Vickie Shaw, Suzanne Westenhoefer and more!
Sister Wives
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 9th
5:30 pm
Dir: Louisa Connolly-Burnham
28 minutes United Kingdom
Sister Wives is a multi-layered love story that tells the tale of young women living in a strict, fundamentalist, polygamous society in 2003 Utah. Kaidence and Galilee find themselves bound to one another, under the same roof, in the same marriage, as they develop scary, new, exciting feelings for each other. In a harsh, regressive, watchful community where being queer is considered a cardinal sin, they begin having thoughts of leaving the only life they have ever known behind.
LAST EXMAS
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 9th
5:30 pm
Director: Sarah Rotella
90 minutes USA
The film follows Maggie & Julianne, ex-girlfriends whose bitter breakup led them down different paths until they unexpectedly rekindle the spark during a visit to their hometown for the holidays. Are they meant to be or is it just the magic of the season? Maggie and Julianne will have to navigate their feelings, the gossiping town, and ghosts of exes past to find out!
Lavender Men
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 9th
8:00 pm
Director: Lovell Holder 99 minutes USA
Taffeta, a contemporary queer person of color, summons Abraham Lincoln to perform an elaborate historical fantasia within her own head, only to learn that she can't hide from her own present-day demons in the shadows of someone else's past.
Kuch Sapney Apne (Dreams Such As Ours)
Kuch Sapney Apne (Dreams Such As Ours)
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 10th
2:00 pm
Director: Sridhar Rangayan
120 mins India
Kartik & Aman's relationship is tested when one of them has a fling which leads to a domestic spat. Kartik's parents' relationship breaks apart when Damodar and Vasudha have a tiff. Will these two couples be ever able resolve their differences? Will their relationships stand the test of time? Kuch Sapney Apne is a sensitive heartwarming film about relationships, queer or not, and what happens when relationships are challenged by uncomfortable truths.
Kuch Sapney Apne is a stand-alone sequel to the Hindi feature film 'Evening Shadows', which screened at OutReels Cincinnati in 2018.
E is For
Kuch Sapney Apne (Dreams Such As Ours)
REGARDING US
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 10th
4:30 pm
Dir: Rebecca Isbill Davis
105 mins USA
When a Black Queer Non-Binary barista/street medic who just moved back to their southern hometown realizes they’ve connected to an alternate version of themselves in another timeline, it brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “You’re just talking to yourself.”
REGARDING US
Kuch Sapney Apne (Dreams Such As Ours)
REGARDING US
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 10th
7:00 pm
Director: David Beck
98 minutes USA
Fired from her teaching job at a Catholic school, a transgender woman contemplates suicide until she meets a young girl with two fathers, and they have a profound impact on each other's lives.
“Regarding Us” is a full-length feature that started as a short film, “Back-Up Plan” which screened at OutReels Cincinnati in 2019.