Flare

Latest reviews

• 
  Kokomo City

  Review preview for Kokomo City

  It’s thrilling to watch a filmmaker like Smith throw a wrench in the gears and deliver an unapologetic ode to outcasts that’s every bit as punk rock as its subjects.

  Four Black transgender sex workers explore the dichotomy between the Black community and themselves, while confronting issues long avoided.
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  Before I Change My Mind

  Review preview for Before I Change My Mind

  A lot of effort has gone into production design, resulting in a film which looks really good for its budget, but the most important factor is Anderson’s eye for the sort of details which stand out to teenagers.

  1987: While the other students wonder if new kid Robin is a boy or a girl, Robin forges a complicated bond with the school bully, making increasingly dangerous choices to fit in.
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  Wolf And Dog

  Review preview for Wolf And Dog

  Shot in a superficially chaotic style which gradually coalesces into something meaningful, Wolf & Dog perfectly captures the haste and ambiguity of teenage life.

  A girl begins to question the world around her through her friendship with her gay best friend.
• 
  Little Richard: I Am Everything

  Review preview for Little Richard: I Am Everything

  For all the debt owed to Sister Rosetta Tharpe the essence here is not translation uncovered but transgression buried. That makes the decision not to further explore these hidden histories all the more surprising.

  This celebration of Little Richard reveals the Black queer origins of rock ’n’ roll, finally exploding the whitewashed canon of American pop music.
• 
  Peafowl

  Review preview for Peafowl

  There’s a lot of interesting work here and it’s startling to realise that it’s director Byun Sung-bin’s first venture into features.

  Steely Shin Myung is a fierce trans queen on the Seoul nightclub scene who reconnects with her Buddhist heritage after the death of her father.
• 
  Chrissy Judy

  Review preview for Chrissy Judy

  A torch song of a film.

  When a man leaves the city to be with his boyfriend, his unstable best friend, with whom he used to perform drag, struggles to cope alone.
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  Lie With Me

  Review preview for Lie With Me

  Despite the powerful allure of the romance in the film there is a lot more going on. An equal amount of attention is paid to the importance of identity.

  When a novelist has an unexpected encounter in his professional life, he recalls falling in love with the young man's father.
• 
  The Perpetrators

  Review preview for The Perpetrators

  The animation interconnects, sometimes in the same image, with a beautifully recreated Eighties suburban world.

  Suburban London, the 1980s. A stranger in the family becomes a ghost child and awakens the monsters and desires of a queer childhood.
• 
  Golden Delicious

  Review preview for Golden Delicious

  Much messier and more like real life than the average coming-of-age film.

  An Asian Canadian teenager grapples with his identity when he falls for the boy next door. What will his family think? And how will he tell his girlfriend?
• 
  Egghead & Twinkie

  Review preview for Egghead & Twinkie

  The bond they have feels real and lived-in, their conversations full of the shorthand which develops over time between people who share almost everything.

  A young Asian American girl and her hapless best friend hit the road to go and meet her online crush.

A–Z of Flare 2023 reviews →

Features

• A film about words
  Olivier Peyon on adapting the work of Philippe Besson in Lie With Me
• True friendship
  Sarah Kambe Holland on platonic love and Egghead & Twinkie
• Rollercoaster ride
  Trevor Anderson on getting closer to characters in Before I Change My Mind
• Director blown away by 'amazing' Adèle
  Léa Mysius and Exarchopoulos talk about The Five Devils
• Anatomy of a panic
  Richard Squires on the history of homophobia and The Perpetrators
• Extending her limits
  Júlia Murat on violence, desire and patriarchal society, and Rule 34
• 'This is not the story of trans experience. It is a story of trans experience'
  Director Luis De Filippis and star Carmen Madonia talk about family and being yourself in Something You Said Last Night
• Blending biography with fiction
  Christophe Honoré and his young star Paul Kircher talk about grief and hope in Winter Boy
• Lacoste is clear
  Actor Vincent on grief and working with Christophe Honoré on Winter Boy and his hopes for the future
• The opposite will also be true
  Eva Vitija on Loving Highsmith, Patricia Highsmith and the film adaptations of her work
• Getting the bug
  Carter Smith on queering horror in Swallowed
• The outside story
  Juan Felipe Zuleta, Matthew Jeffers and Sarah Hay on Unidentified Objects