Out of Shadows 2025 dir. Pradeep Mahadeshwar
This year’s Queer Spectrum Film Festival (QSFF) is special for many reasons. This year, I was supported by Screen Ireland; for an independent grassroots film festival like ours, this was an achievement in itself. I want to make QSFF a place where not just films are screened, but where LGBTQ+ migrants and queer people of colour (QPoC) who have called Ireland their home can get inspired and feel supported to make films. As a queer migrant artist myself, I understand this timely need. We proudly celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Marriage Referendum and Gender Recognition Act in 2025, but we don’t often reflect on how these milestones have brought a massive creative talent pool to this country and what infrastructure we have built for them.
Through projects like QSFF, we are weaving a cultural fabric and creating a welcoming space where LGBTQ+ people of colour, immigrants, and allies can connect, feel inspired to share stories, and embody the living, breathing reality of ‘New Irish Queerness’ – one that allows us to be who we are.
At QSFF, our storytelling on screen moves beyond traditional coming-out narratives. We are drawn to stories of queer lives in motion – stories of transition not just in terms of gender or sexuality, but across place, culture, and identity. It’s about the in-between spaces, the act of becoming, the quiet, continuous transformations that define who we are. These films capture the emotional, psychological, and physical journeys of those evolving into someone different from where they began – a celebration of shifting selves and reimagined futures.
This year’s festival is proudly organised by Queer Asian Pride Ireland (QAPI). I lead QSFF as the Founder, Director, and Programmer, working alongside Festival Manager Prateek Bhardwaj. We also have jurors Dr Meishan Zhang, Kay, and Prateek Bhardwaj to help select the short film programme. This was an intentional move to bring diverse migrant views to the decision-making process.
Queer Spectrum Film Festival celebrates those who took one of the most challenging journeys of their lives to come to Ireland in search of safety and community. Carrying memories, culture, and aspirations from distant homes within them, the presence of these individuals is redefining what it means to be Irish and queer today. We are continuously growing, and are honoured to host the 2026 edition at the Irish Film Institute (IFI) from June 12 to 14, featuring 26 powerful films that will light up the screen.
At the heart of QSFF 2026’s theme, ‘Tender Migrations: Queer Journeys Through Desire, Transition, and Healing’, these films explore movements across borders, identities, generations, and emotional worlds, revealing how queer lives are shaped by resilience, longing, and transformation. Treat Me Like Your Mother and Out Laws embody the spirit of QSFF 2026’s theme, through their powerful explorations of queer survival, resistance, and collective memory.
In Treat Me Like Your Mother, Mohamad Abdouni crafts an intimate act of archival healing, restoring visibility to transfeminine lives in Beirut that have long been excluded from official histories. The film’s blending of personal photographs and documentary testimony creates a tender space where desire, identity, and community persist despite violence and erasure.
Similarly, Out Laws traces another kind of migration: the movement from colonial oppression toward liberation. Friedel Dausab’s legal and personal struggle against Namibia’s anti-queer laws reveals how queer lives continue to navigate inherited systems of exclusion while imagining freer futures.
Together, both films speak to the emotional labour of survival and the transformative power of remembering, resisting, and reclaiming space.
TIGER and Montréal, ma belle deepen the festival’s focus on queer transition and self-reinvention by centring characters whose journeys unfold through intimacy, loneliness, and late awakenings. TIGER offers a raw portrait of Tokyo’s ageing queer community through Taiga’s search for belonging, exposing the quiet emotional migrations queer people undertake between family expectation, desire, and self-acceptance. The film’s tenderness lies in its attention to vulnerability and the cost of living authentically within restrictive social structures. In Montréal, ma belle, Feng Xia’s unexpected romance becomes both a personal and cultural crossing, as she moves beyond a lifetime of obligation toward emotional freedom and queer self-recognition. Her story reflects the festival’s theme through its intertwining of exile, longing, and healing, showing how migration can be emotional as much as geographical. Together, these films illuminate queer transformation not as a singular moment, but as an ongoing journey toward visibility, connection, and liberation.
We have three short blocks. The Living with HIV programme on Saturday, June 13, powerfully reflects QSFF 2026’s theme by foregrounding stories shaped by stigma, survival, and collective resistance. Across Tunisia, Britain and Ireland, these films trace the emotional and political journeys queer communities undertake while confronting systems of exclusion, silence, and institutional neglect. Exile reveals how queer people living with HIV navigate fear, criminalisation, and social invisibility, while Reframing AIDS reclaims histories erased by racist and homophobic narratives during the AIDS crisis in Britain. Out of Shadows extends these conversations through experimental documentary practice, centring the resilience and humanity of those forced to exist at the margins. Together, the programme transforms memory, testimony, and visibility into acts of healing and defiance, honouring queer lives shaped by both vulnerability and extraordinary endurance.
Treat Me Like Your Mother 2025 dir. Mohamad Abdouni
Montréal, ma belle 2025 dir. Xiaodan He
The Intimate Colours short film block on Sunday, June 14, embodies the festival’s exploration of queer desire, identity, and belonging through a rich tapestry of intimate, globally connected stories. Moving across cultures, generations, and cinematic forms, the programme examines how queer people negotiate visibility and self-expression within spaces marked by migration, race, gender norms, and social expectation. These films capture moments of tenderness and transformation from underground queer performance cultures to deeply personal reflections on love, body image, and emotional connection. In doing so, Intimate Colours speaks directly to the idea of ‘Tender Migrations’, where journeys are not only geographical but also internal, emotional, and relational. The programme celebrates queer intimacy as both deeply personal and inherently political, offering space for vulnerability, joy, and radical self-definition.
The Tender Migration short film block on Sunday, June 14, forms the emotional and thematic heart of QSFF 2026, bringing together stories of queer movement, survival, and self-discovery across borders and generations. These films explore migration not simply as physical displacement, but as an ongoing process of becoming – navigating identity, memory, kinship, and cultural inheritance in the face of constraint and exclusion. Through experimental storytelling and powerful narrative encounters, the programme centres queer lives searching for connection, safety, and recognition amid political violence, social alienation, and personal transformation. Whether through stories of transgender resilience, forbidden love, or chosen family, the films reveal how tenderness itself can become a form of resistance. Together, they offer a moving meditation on healing, care, and the enduring possibility of queer liberation.
If all that weren’t enough, this year, we are opening the festival with an immersive show at the Project Arts Centre called ‘Drag of Colour - Variety Show’, supported by the Certified Proud Fund and Taighde Éireann - Research Ireland. It’s a vibrant celebration bringing together trans and queer BIPOC creativity for the opening night of Queer Spectrum Film Festival 2026 on June 12. A series of guest artists will combine their performances and art forms with their own interpretations of drag in a multilingual, multicultural variety show. The space will be a playground for queer migrants who want to explore drag art in a safe and supportive environment. I am collaborating with Danny Carby-Robinson and Pepe Sánchez-Molero on this.
At QSFF, we want to make a change to Ireland’s film industry, but we can’t do it alone. Along with Screen Ireland, we also received generous support from Outhouse LGBTQ+ Centre, Gay Health Network, LGBT Ireland, Dublin LGBTQ+ Pride, Dublin Bears and Maharani Gin. This community support is essential to queer migrant activism. Thank you for believing in the vision of this festival.
QSFF 2026 would also not be possible without the Irish Film Institute (IFI), which gave us a home. Our heartfelt thanks extend to our collaborators Poz Vibe Tribe, Veda Lady, Dublin Lesbian Line and Asian & Irish Community Connect. We also would like to acknowledge the support from GAZE International LGBTQIA+ Film Festival and TITE Film Festival, which continue to champion queer cinema across the globe. Greg and Sam from GAZE have also shared their knowledge and guidance, helping to make this edition as exciting as possible. We also honour the invaluable support of the GCN team, whose work strengthens the fabric of solidarity and community.
Queer Spectrum Film Festival is more than a showcase of films; it is a space to make connections, get inspired, dream and thrive. Welcome to QSFF 2026. Welcome home.
The 2026 edition of Queer Spectrum Film Festival takes place in the IFI from June 12 to 14. Find out more at ifi.ie/queer-spectrum-film-festival-2026.
This article is part of GCN’s new Amach le Bród (Out with Pride) series, to combat anti-LGBTQ+ misinformation and platform underrepresented voices. The project was funded by the Coimisiún na Meán News Reporting Scheme.
Is am é Bród chun saibhreas agus éagsúlacht an phobail LGBTQIA+ agus a chomhghuaillithe a cheiliúradh — agus chun machnamh a dhéanamh ar an méid atá bainte amach againn go dtí seo, agus ár dtiomantas don chomhionannas, don mheas agus don mhuintearas do chách a athnuachan.
Tá Comhairle Cathrach Bhaile Átha Cliath bródúil as seasamh lenár mbaill den phobal LGBTQIA+, a gcairde, a dteaghlaigh agus a gcomhghuaillithe. I gcroílár ár gcathrach, tá ár gcuid oibre treoraithe ag tiomantas domhain do Bhaile Átha Cliath a thógáil atá rathúil, cuimsitheach agus fáilteach do gach duine a chónaíonn, a oibríonn agus a cheiliúrann anseo.
Thar ceann Chomhairle Cathrach Bhaile Átha Cliath, guímid Féile Bród 2026 shona, bhríomhar agus lúcháireach ar gach duine
Pride is a time to celebrate the richness and diversity of the LGBTQIA+ community and its allies — and to reflect on how far we've come, while renewing our commitment to equality, respect, and belonging for everyone.
Dublin City Council is proud to stand with our LGBTQIA+ community members, their friends, families, and allies. At the heart of our city, our work is guided by a deep commitment to building a Dublin that is thriving, inclusive, and welcoming for all who live, work, and celebrate here.
On behalf of Dublin City Council, we wish everyone a joyful, vibrant, and very Happy Pride 2026.
Richard Shakespeare Chief Executive, Dublin City Council