The ten best films to see at MQFF this year

Are you ready to be thoroughly emotionally discombobulated? Weekend filmmaker Andrew Haigh is at it again, casting everyone’s biggest crush of 2019 – Fleabag’s Andrew 'Hot Priest' Scott – as a lonely guy haunted by the memory of his parents, who died when he was 12. Then suddenly, the world – and possibly time itself – opens up who falls in with a mysterious neighbour, as played by everyone’s biggest crush right now, Aftersun’s Paul Mescal. Bring tissues!

Penelope Cruz! This is not a drill! The Spanish superstar plays a woman smothered in a loveless marriage in 1970s Rome who nevertheless brings weapons-grade joy to her kids’ lives with an fabulous breakfast table dance sequence that will set your toes a-tapping. The stand-out of her brood is magnificent newcomer Luana Giuliani’s Adri, a headstrong young person who doesn’t fit easily into rigid gender binaries and is falling in love for the first time.

Melbourne-based Macedonian-Australian filmmaker Goran Stolevski (Of an Age) returns to the country of his birth to tell this found family story of Dita – a lesbian social worker played by Stolveski’s You Won’t Be Alone star Anamaria Marinca – her Roma lover Suada (Alina Serban) and her teenage kids, plus a cavalcade of revolving door souls in search of a loving place to feel safe. Which might involve a faux marriage before terminal illness breaks up this queer clan.

Music industry whizz turned filmmaker D Smith’s cinema verité-style doco, shot in luminous monochrome, follows four Black and trans sex workers and their clients in Atlanta and New York. Daniella Carter, Dominique Silver, Koko Da Doll and Liyah Mitchell invite us into their refreshingly candid recollections of a job that can be, at times, confronting, but also gloriously reaffirming in this open-hearted, sassy portrait that picked up an audience award at Berlinale.

We don’t get to see the A in the LGBTQIA+ rainbow portrayed on our screens all too often, so Lithuanian filmmaker Marija Kavtaradze’s Sundance Directing Award-winning sophomore feature is a welcome addition to this year’s MQFF program. Gifted contemporary dancer Elena (Greta Grinevičiūtė) meets sign language interpreter Dovyda when teaching deaf students and is instantly drawn to him. But can she adjust to a passionate relationship that doesn’t involve sex?

A starry cast of queer heroes brings the glitter in Tom Gustafson’s electric rom-com about a musician and a clown falling head over heels for one another, with guest roles for such queens as Lea DeLaria (Orange is the New Black), Tig Notaro (Star Trek: Discovery), Peppermint (RuPaul’s Drag Race) and also the freaking Indigo Girls (look out for the country music stars in MQFF doco It’s Only Life After All). Expect abundant joy plus absolute bangers on the soundtrack.

If you’re after an edge-of-your-seat thriller, look no further than this London nights-set cat and mouse game from debut feature directors Ng Choon Ping and Sam H. Freeman. It features Misfits star Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as a fabulous drag performer who loses his mojo when attacked on the street by Pride lead George MacKay’s closeted homophobe. But when the former in civilian clothing spies the latter in a gay sauna, he hatches a plan to seduce his abuser and make him pay.

There’s something remarkably appealing about people who dream so big they can’t settle until their wishes come true. That’s the case with adorable Hungarian boyfriends Lénárd and Gergo, an aspiring writer and musician, respectively, who set their sights on making a musical about their lives as a gay and Romani couple in a country that increasingly has little love for either community. It’s all about the journey in this equal-parts goofily cute and heart-wrenching adventure.

If you have pinned-back-by-barred-wire eyes on the indie horror scene, you might be familiar with prolific young and trans filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay from our spookiest state, South Australia. She’s pumped out five features in fewer years (including MQFF pair Satranic Panic), with this riot depicting the rise of ancient body-snatching parasites and a movie director (Lauren Last) determined to prevent this apocalypse. Look out for drag artist Etcetera Etcetera.

Set in Prague on the eve of the Great War, 15-year-old Anka (Dana Droppová) is sent from her Slovak village by her newly married mother (writer/director Mariana Čengel Solčanská) to work as a maid for a well-to-do German couple. Shocked by the bullying of Resi (Radka Caldová), their privileged and pesky daughter, this gradually gives way to fascination. But Resi is promised to be married and Anka is far below her station in this longing upstairs downstairs drama.