bfi flare London lgbtqia+ film festival short film programme overview
19 March 2025
Short Stuff team
Art by Eva Gomez-Lang
The BFI Flare Film Festival is back for its 39th year with an expansive programme of brilliant queer cinema taking place over the course of nearly two weeks. Across twelve curated collections, the festival boasts an incredible – and slightly overwhelming – 70 short films, spanning various themes and made by filmmakers from across the world.
Short Stuff team members Maja Antoine-Onikoyi, Julia Black Jackson and Molly Lipson reviewed a handful of the films in the shorts programme to give a flavour of what’s on offer. If you’re in London, this is a great opportunity to catch some incredible shorts by talented and diverse filmmakers. With so many different themes, ideas and perspectives, there’s something for everyone. We’ve not included a review of any short in the For The Girls collection as we have a very exciting piece coming on that soon, keep your eyes peeled!
The full shorts programme at BFI Flare is available here.
Blue Violet
Collection: Between Worlds
Director: Josie Charles
Screenwriter: Esme Allen
Shot mainly on a camcorder, this low budget but high production short tells the story of Blue as she prepares a birthday present for her beloved, Violet. The sweetness of their relationship starts to turn sour as a phone call signals what’s really going on. When we see self-filmed footage of a cute camping trip they took together, the beautiful forest filled with bluebells portrays a vast openness and vividity which contrasts to the claustrophobic and much darker interior footage we see of Blue as they begin to spiral out of control. This is a very simple and effective short that leaves you both reeling and wanting more.
Park Life
Collection: Brief Encounters
Director: Marco De Luca
Screenwriter: Adam Silver
Two men meet whilst cruising, and end up spending the day together, wandering around London in an unexpected romantic encounter. Despite the sexually charged opening, the film melts into a more romantic mood that draws you close. The dewy, grainy grade and the music both contribute significantly to this, with gentle, soothing music reminiscent of a background track in a popular date spot. The camera gaze remains close and intimate, interspersed with shots of the rolling landscapes of the city. Gentleness is a repeated motif in this short, emphasised through the dialogue, colour grade and sound design, creating a perfect platform for the chemistry between the two leads to do most of the talking.
Yellow Is the Color of Happiness
Collection: The Flame Of My Resistance
Director-Screenwriter: Cherine Karam
Set in Beirut, this poetic documentary focuses on Marc, a worker at a second-hand store who designs accessories. As he and some of his friends transform themselves with colourful clothes and shiny jewellery, Marc’s narration provides information on the life cycles of butterflies as they emerge from their chrysalis. The metaphor isn’t supposed to be subtle – the beautiful softness of the caterpillar’s transformation is how Marc sees his own journey. Interspersed with scenes in the store are dance sequences and slow, undulating imagery of various fabrics and flowers, scenes of the city and the hubbub of life in the store. This short offers a gorgeous visualisation of joy, freedom, identity and chosen family.
Jasmine That Blooms in Autumn
Collection: Day Dreamers
Director: Chandradeep Das
Screenwriters: Rahul Roye, Chandradeep Das
In a retirement home, two residents fall in love. Both women, their love is forbidden in this part of the world, and they’re forced to keep their relationship hidden. The two lead actors give powerful and moving performances, and it’s a rare beauty to see romance between older women portrayed on screen. Throughout the film there are small but hard-hitting insights into the culture that provides the backdrop to this heartbreaking story, with elements of joy and youth juxtaposed with the process of ageing and having to keep love under wraps. The flowers and messages that one woman sends to the other convey a soft intimacy that leaves us with the thought, “so close, yet so far.”
Hopepunk
Collection: Karma’s A B*tch!
Director-Screenwriter: Vasiliki Lazaridou
Set in a world where zombies are part of regular life, a driver called Andy travels across the city in a taxi with their partner Pina, a zombie secret weapon, stashed in the trunk. Their aim is to set a trap for a gang of nationalist drivers that control the streets. The colour grade really feels into the sandy aridness you’d expect in a zombie apocalypse, with clever use of light effects to portray the scenes of the zombies taking control over the city and the nationalist gang. The red tones in particular help draw out the themes of control and power that run through the film. The filmmakers do a great job of creating the world of the film, and with powerfully crafted characters, we are fully hooked and drawn in.
Shoobs
Collection: I Like Who I Like
Director: Lisle Turner
Screenwriter: Janet Etuk
Shoobs is set at a house party in South London. Lisa likes both Blazer and Jada, and when a surprise guest shows up to give Lisa advice, she takes it on board at her own peril. The vibrant, bold colours in the party scene, accompanied by dimmed purple-tinged lighting, effectively capture that nostalgic noughties ‘shoobs’ vibe. The well-written externalised inner dialogue makes for a clever and witty script, and provides space to explore that specific contrast between who we’re expected to be, and who we really are that many of us know so well.
Shall We Meet Tonight
Collection: Queer Africa: New Visions
Director-Screenwriter: Wapah Ezeigwe
Set in Eastern Nigeria, Adaora is engaged to be married to Ejiofor. Out dress shopping together one day, she locks eyes with another woman across the shop floor. It is only later that we find out the two are lovers, with Adaora often sneaking out to meet her beloved Susanne by night. The acting is sublime, the characters’ pain at not being able to be together so clearly etched onto their faces. In their brief moments together, this pain moulds into love, joy and freedom, but it is fleeting. The close ups and lingering shots create an intimacy not only between the characters, but between the audience and the characters that makes it even harder to bear their separation.
Wrong Bathroom
Collection: Let Trans Kids Bloom
Director: Ragini Bhasin
Screenwriter: Nate Gualtieri
Gabe, a trans teenager, uses the boys’ bathrooms at school to get changed for sports practice, where he encounters two self defined ‘big dogs’ of the school who proceed to pressure him to reveal information about the girls’ cross country team’s sexual conquests. The intensity Gabe experiences is brilliantly created through combination mirror shots, making it impossible to ever truly get away from the two boys; they are ever present. However, they also make him feel included, ‘one of us’, one of the boys. The more they press this point, the more we see Gabe’s resolve to not share any information start to falter. Despite the discomfort, there is also a welcome inclusiveness that leaves us feeling conflicted, no easy feat in such a short time frame.
We’ll Go Down In History
Collection: Sporty Spice
Directors: Cameron Richards, Charlie Tidmas
This uplifting short doc tells the story of grassroots trans football team TRUK United as they build up towards a huge match that takes place on Trans Day of Visibility. From the first moment of this film, you fall in love with the protagonists, especially young teen Emily and team founder (and midfielder) Lucy. They are down to earth, funny and bold, often cracking jokes, but also sharing their shocking, but not surprising personal experiences of transphobia. By focusing on the joy, love and community that TRUK United has nourished for its members and their loved ones, We’ll Go Down In History saliently combats the hateful narratives around trans people in sport and showcases instead what it means to come together and just be.
Blackout
Collection: Queer and Now
Director-Screenwriter: Chris Urch
As Reuben prepares a birthday party for his boyfriend, he is disturbed by shouting next door. He checks on his neighbours, but doesn’t take things any further. In the meantime, having got the date wrong for the party, he and his boyfriend celebrate together. The celebrations soon turn dark when violence occurs, but it’s not the violence we’re expecting. Though we – and Reuben – have been set up to expect an explosion of some kind from the neighbours, it’s what happens in Reuben’s own home that shakes the audience’s sense of stability and perception. The colours remain dark and muted, even through the birthday celebrations, and the lead performance from Mawaan Rizwan is one of understated power.
Two Black Boys in Paradise
Collection: To Your Souls
Director: Baz Sells
Screenwriters: Baz Sells, Ben Jackson, Dean Atta
Based on the poem by Dean Atta, this stunning animation offers a beautiful representation of Black love through – and despite – societal expectations and hardships. For our protagonists, “There are no police in paradise./There are no white people in this paradise.” More than that, though, paradise is a place where these two Black men can be in love uninterrupted by the daily racism and violence they face in the UK. Despite the lack of dialogue, the craftsmanship in the animation creates distinct personalities for each boy, and when they smile, you smile; when they cry, you cry too. The details in the facial expressions, the ripples in the water in paradise’s sea, and the pure and intimate representation of sex make this film an absolute highlight of the festival.