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Festival coverage

Flare

21 March – 1 April 2018

London's premier LGBTQ+ Film Festival, BFI Flare, returns for another edition with some of the most important and entertaining films about sexual and gender minorities from around the world.

The festival runs from 21 March to 1 April.

Other years (12)

Box office and information

Latest reviews

  • Buddies
    Review preview for Buddies

    Both lead actors are well chosen. Bressan Jr directs with a quiet assurance that gives them lots of room to work but ensures that the film never tips over into melodrama.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    The first film to deal with the AIDS crisis tells the story of a man who becomes a voluntary 'buddy' for an AIDS patient and finds their relationship changing
  • A Deal With The Universe
    Review preview for A Deal With The Universe

    The film cuts through al the intellectual debate around these subjects to remind us of the human experiences at their core.

    Jennie Kermode · 3.5 out of 5
    The filmmaker documents 15 years of his life, including aspects of his transition and his subsequent pregnancy.
  • Sidney And Friends
    Review preview for Sidney And Friends

    Technically impressive given the conditions in which some of it is filmed, Sidney And Friends is a powerful piece of filmmaking exploring the human impact of prejudice and simple ignorance.

    Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
    Scottish filmmaker Tristan Aitchison visited Kenya in 2013. A chance meeting with an activist revealed an underground network of intersex and trans people that wanted their voices heard.
  • Pulse
    Review preview for Pulse

    Perhaps there are certain questions that we don't need asked; or if they are to be asked, a certain care in the way they are asked would be helpful.

    Jane Fae · 2 out of 5
    After a series of humiliations, a young disabled man looking for love decides to transition – but not in the manner you’d expect. Set in an alternative present in which medical procedures are drastically different, the question of what it means to change gender is complicated by the question of what it means to find love when you have a disabled body in an ableist world.
  • Maurice
    Review preview for Maurice

    What's really revolutionary about this film is the way Ivory photographs male bodies.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    A young man has to come to terms with his sexuality.
  • Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco
    Review preview for Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco

    Kindness and joy not always come to mind when one thinks of the fashion world. This is the rare portrait where they do. As the documentary unfolds, we marvel at the diversity, the celebratory mood.

    Anne-Katrin Titze · 4 out of 5
    Documentary about the fashion illustrator.
  • Love, Simon
    Review preview for Love, Simon

    Nice

    Angus Wolfe Murray · 3 out of 5
    A young teenager worries that his family will discover he's gay before he's ready, and finds himself falling in love with a similarly closeted classmate he talks to online, without either of them knowing who the other is.
  • A Fantastic Woman
    Review preview for A Fantastic Woman

    Lelio makes no bones about how he wants us to feel, to the point where it sometimes feels as though he is stating the obvious is six-foot neon letters.

    Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
    A transgender woman fights for the right to grieve after the death of her partner.
  • The Happy Prince
    Review preview for The Happy Prince

    A mixed bag, as while Everett the actor masterfully evokes the mournful mix of decadence and decay of the last years of Wilde, Everett the filmmaker is, like so many before him, too much in love with the brilliant old rogue for his own good.

    Amber Wilkinson · 3 out of 5
    The last days of Oscar Wilde.
  • Call Me By Your Name
    Review preview for Call Me By Your Name

    It is fundamentally a film about the workings of infatuation with a charmed fever that contaminates its characters.

    Anne-Katrin Titze · 4.5 out of 5
    First love blooms over a long, hot summer for a teenager in Italy.

A–Z of Flare 2018 reviews

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