The 2023 Toronto Queer Film Festival will be held online from March 23 to April 23, 2023 with the theme of Queer Wonderlands. This year our programme invokes realms full of transitions, joy, and love, inspired by imagination with the anticipation of what is to come. Calling on the queer imagining that occurs through the uncanny, monstrous, whimsical, and fantastical, we invite our audiences to step into a world of collective visioning where all 2Spirit/Queer/Trans people and communities thrive in an environment of wellness, protection, connection, and sustainability.

For the third consecutive year, we will host the TQFF annual festival entirely online. We continue to prioritize making our programming accessible to queer, trans and Two-Spirit filmmakers and audiences - both in Toronto and worldwide - amidst the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

To facilitate access to the festival, TQFF’s entire programme will be presented without geoblocking, making it accessible to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Following its premiere weekend, all programming will be available for online viewing for one month until April 23, 2023.

TQFF is ecstatic to announce the selections of feature film presentations for 2023! The line up comprises some of the best queer cinema has to offer. First is the much awaited (and exclusive to TQFF) Sailor Moon Scandalous - PSPSPS: I love you by Director Harjot Bal. This second in a series of Sailor Moon satires is a post-2020 parody fandub of the iconic 90s anime. Bal’s Sailor Moon is rewritten as a dark comedy that breaches issues related to queer folx, women, and people of colour. This parody series, created for marginalized people by marginalized people, features Luna struggling to find meaning outside of her thankless job of managing the Sailor Scouts. Desperate to reclaim her “womanhood,” Luna falls head over paws in lust with a toxic man who is sabotaging his relationship with a renowned Latinx woman astronaut. Meanwhile, an icy villainess descends on Earth, unleashing harsh snowstorms fitting for a company Christmas party that will hopefully earn her a well-deserved promotion.

TQFF’s second presentation is Cut, by Director Mike Hoolboom. Building on theorist Hito Steyerl's bracing 2009 essay of the same name, Cut looks at how cinema and the assembly line both cut the body in new ways, organizing newly urban work forces. Cut is a dreamy collage essay made of scraps and fragments, with asides from Susan Sontag on Disney fascism and Paul B. Preciado on the cost of living in a body.

Next, TQFF will present Estuaries, by Director Lior Shamriz. Estuaries is set in Los Angeles in 2017, months after a car crashed through the front window of a Los Angeles art space, killing Bdalak, a rising nonbinary performance artist. Bdalak’s partner Eli, a queer Mizrahi musician with a past as an activist in Palestine, had planned on marrying them for a greencard, but now spends his time adrift, communing with others over his grief and struggling with his visa. He soon meets Myrna, an artist making work about immigration, who he feels can help with his precarious situation.

The final feature presentation will be The Last Image, by Director Benedito Ferreira. The film’s protagonist, Benedito Senna, is blind. He moved from the Brazilian city of Belém to France, where he fell in love with and married Jean Luc, who is somewhat his eyes and a devoted reader of his poems. In Paris, he meets another Benedito, a film director who is also Brazilian and gay. Their friendship begins with an exchange of videos and voicemails, and their passion for images reunite them years later to make a movie. As they set out to shoot, however, they realize things are no longer the same and differences arise.

Toronto Queer Film Festival has always aimed at addressing pressing issues and needs of the art and cultural landscape. It takes pride and honors the importance of being a festival which is a true reflection of the times we all are in.

TQFF will premiere films and stories from across the globe, taking you on a magical journey of love and triumph that crosses borders and takes you through realms of a better tomorrow!

Stay tuned for our details about our shorts programs, industry symposium, and the entire film festival line up for this year!

This year the festival will be hosted entirely online, with premieres from 23rd- 25th March. All films will subsequently be available for online viewing for a period of one month until 23rd April.

We hope you enjoy our teaser trailer of Queer Wonderlands on our webpage in the meantime, and please feel free to reach out to us for more information at: https://torontoqueerfilmfest.com/

Tune into TQFF 2023, you do not want to miss this!

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About TQFF:

The Toronto Queer Film Festival is a collectively-run, artist-centered, not-for-profit festival that showcases contemporary, innovative, queer and trans film and video art. Our foremost goal as an organization is community building: creating space for queer and trans filmmakers and audiences to come together in the spirit of art and activism.

Our foremost goal as an organization is community building: creating space for queer and trans filmmakers and audiences to come together in the spirit of art and activism.

In addition to the annual festival, TQFF offers year-round programming, including screenings and workshop intensives.

TQFF is funded entirely by the Government of Canada, Government of Ontario, Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts, as well as by the generous contributions of our community sponsors, members, and donors.

Accessibility

All TQFF events are “pay what you can”. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

All screenings and presentations will be closed-captioned and/or ASL-interpreted.

Donate: To support the festival, please consider becoming a donor.

All donations are helpful in empowering our communities and to help TQFF run the festival successfully, to make it accessible whilst paying artist fees above the minimum standard.

To donate visit: https://torontoqueerfilmfest.com/donate/

Buy Tickets here: https://torontoqueerfilmfest.com/tickets

Ticketing and festival queries contact

Sharlene Bamboat,

Director of Operations

info@torontoqueerfilmfest.com

Website: www.torontoqueerfilmfest.com

Follow TQFF on:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/torontoqueerfilmfestival/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/torontoqueerfilmfest

Download Logo and image Files: https://neon.ly/pOrJ5

Press contact:

Shahbaz Mamdani

press@torontoqueerfilmfest.com

(437)972-1366