UK2025 15:00English, Urdu with English subtitlesAvailable Online

Haunted by rising sea levels, a daughter digs up her father’s grave to move his body to higher ground.

IN PERSON: This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated).

ONLINE: This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned in all closed captions (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated).

Directors Bio

Elham Ehsas

Elham Ehsas is a writer, director, and actor working across film and TV. His short film Yellow (2023) was BAFTA-nominated in 2024 and shortlisted for the Academy Awards.

Canada, Germany, Singapore, UK, USA2024–202589 minVarious languages with English subtitlesAvailable Online

We each bring our own style to the table — whether that's upholding tradition or breaking it, following the rules or bending them. These films explore familial complexity through play, transformation, agency, and hope.

For: black sheep, go-getters, underdogs, those with a wild imagination

*Directors in attendance starred.

Taiwan, UK2018 6:00No dialogue2slgbtq+, Animation, Available Online, Experimental, Gay, LGBTQ+ Filmmakers, Non-binary, Queer, Transgender

Comprising over 2,000 hand-painted frames, Adorable presents a journey of a queer person, illustrating modern queer society, where discrimination, freedom, and love coexist.

IN PERSON: This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated).

ONLINE: This film is fully captioned in closed captions (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated).

Directors Bio

Cheng-Hsu Chung

Cheng-Hsu Chung is a Taiwanese animation artist and director based in Berlin. Chung’s artistic practice focuses on surreal images and character performances in animation to articulate the changing nature of emotion, modern love, and the experiences queer bodies encounter.

Taiwan, UK20234 MinEnglishAnimation, Available Online, Directed By Women

A poetic narrative and self-portrait through experimentation in 2D animation, stop-motion and sound, this short film delves into a self-searching and healing journey, exploring the relationship between emotion and space.

IN PERSON: This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated)

ONLINE: This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated)

Directors Bio

Chu-Chieh Lee

Chu-Chieh Lee is a Taiwanese animation director and illustrator based in London, U.K. She finished her master’s in narrative animation at the Royal College of Art. Her clients include LinkedIn, Google, Nestlé, and BBC.

UK20223 minEnglishAnimation, Experimental, Science Fiction

A mad clock takes the viewer on a time trip to a random planet where the concept of time is experienced differently from the one we know...

Directors Bio

*Shunny Kim & Taewan Kim

Shunny Kim and Taewan Kim are animators based in London. Co-directing their BA graduation film, their interests aligned through experimental animation, character design and collaboration.

UK202375 minEnglishCanadian Premiere

Chloe Abrahams’ debut feature, is an enveloping, hypnotic, urgently personal meditation on family, memory, identity, violence, and love. At its centre are three extraordinary women: the director’s mother, Rozana; her grandmother, Jean; and the director herself. Their stories, by turns difficult and jubilant, testify to the entangled and ever-changing nature of inheritance and the ways in which we both hurt and protect the ones we love.

What emerges is a delicately layered, personal and collective portrait of coping with physical and sexual violence, the damage of grief and estrangement, and the possibilities of hope, joy, healing, and reconciliation.

Canada, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, UK, USA2022-2023TRT: 1h30Tagalog, English, Korean2slgbtq+, Animation, Comedy, Directed By Women, Drama, Experimental, Romance, Science Fiction

Hmm … this doesn’t seem right?! This programme asks us to sit with the discomforting feelings that arise when we begin to confront the unknown in what we believe to know.

*Directors in attendance starred. 

Canada, Sri Lanka, UK202167 minutesTamil, Urdu, English with English subtitlesDocumentary, Experimental, LGBTQ+ Filmmakers

If From Every Tongue It Drips is a documentary constructed between three locations that follows Ponni, who writes a form of 19th-century queer Urdu poetry called Rekhti, and her lover Sarala, a camera operator. As their personal lives unfold on camera, the lines between rehearsal and reality, location and distance, and self and other seem to dissipate. The couple’s conversations are interwoven with the director’s own reflections, connecting dots from each of their specific experiences and reference points.

By choosing to look at the personal and political through the framework of quantum physics, director Sharlene Bamboat draws connections between British colonialism and Indian nationalism, tracing the impact these distinct histories and realities have on queer art, politics, poetry, dance, and music. From landmark pieces of music and poetry composed by revolutionary figures to more contemporary works, the film shows us the politicization of South Asian pop culture and the possibilities of its reclamation.

- Mariam Zaidi

UK202090 minEnglish, Urdu with English SubtitlesToronto PremiereDrama, Family

On the brink of his first international tour, Zed, a British Pakistani rapper, decides to fly home to the U.K. to reconnect with his family, only to find out his first big international break could be jeopardized by an unexpected and quickly debilitating autoimmune disease. As his condition worsens and his medical treatments intensify, Zed descends into a physical and emotional crisis. His days are marked by vivid hallucinations and long-buried childhood memories of his parents fleeing India during the Partition, forcing him to face resurfaced trauma.

A film co-written, produced by and starring Emmy Award-winning actor Riz Ahmed, Mogul Mowgli is a disquieting and electrifying exploration of identity, self-expression and intergenerational trauma. Bassam Tariq’s directorial lead and Ahmed’s transfixing performance create a gutsy, beat-packed drama authored by bi-cultural artists powerfully expressing their right to thrive in all spaces, especially those that have been built to reject them.

– Mariam Zaidi