Outfest Los Angeles

Latest reviews

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  Changing The Game

  Review preview for Changing The Game

  Barnett excels at capturing nuances of expression and action.

  Transgender high school athletes from across the US compete at the top of their fields, while also challenging the boundaries and perceptions of fairness and discrimination.
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  Sequin In A Blue Room

  Review preview for Sequin In A Blue Room

  Sequin in A Blue Room is a reminder of Nineties angst media and queer celebration, within the dark corners of adolescence.

  When a teenager's thrill-seeking leads to a memorable encounter at an anonymous sex party, he resolves to track down the mystery guy - even if he has to rely on a menacing former hook-up to help him.
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  Saint Frances

  Review preview for Saint Frances

  As the sunny days pass and Bridget finds herself sinking into the job of caring for Frances more than she imagined, the warmth trickles into the corners of the film leaving cynicism no place to lurk.

  After an accidental pregnancy turned abortion, a deadbeat nanny finds an unlikely friendship with the six-year old she's charged with protecting
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  To The Stars

  Review preview for To The Stars

  Director Martha Stephens uses a palette full of soft browns and pastels designed to evoke nostalgia but shows us plenty of cruelty just under the surface.

  Under small town scrutiny, a withdrawn farmer’s daughter forges an intimate friendship with a worldly but reckless new girl in 1960s Oklahoma.
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  Tremors

  Review preview for Tremors

  Bustamante employs physical earthquakes as well, with a similar subtlety that he goes on to use the myth of La Llorona in his follow up film

  The coming out of an evangelical father shatters his family, his community and uncovers a profoundly repressive society.
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  Queer Japan

  Review preview for Queer Japan

  Particularly intriguing here is the overlap between hentai and art.

  Trailblazing artists, activists, and everyday people from across the spectrum of gender and sexuality defy social norms and dare to live unconventional lives in this kaleidoscopic view of LGBTQ culture in contemporary Japan.
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  Jonathan Agassi Saved My Life

  Review preview for Jonathan Agassi Saved My Life

  Jonathan is an ideal subject because he's completely open to the world.

  Behind the scenes with Israeli global gay-porn sensation and self-admitted mama’s boy Jonathan Agassi during his first eight years in the business.
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  A Dog Barking At The Moon

  Review preview for A Dog Barking At The Moon

  Lisa Zi Xiang's astutely written début uses the familiar formula of a multi-generation family saga as a launchpad for thematic and structural experiment.

  A Chinese family saga, told in different periods of time, commencing with the wife’s discovery of her husband’s homosexuality.
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  From Zero To I Love You

  Review preview for From Zero To I Love You

  Spearman draws his characters well, putting relatively little focus on the romance - which the actors convey just fine in the space they have - and instead exploring the way each of them is affected as a person.

  When Peter bumps into handsome businessman Jack in a gay bar, they begin a passionate relationship, in spite of Jack being married. Peter keeps ending up with married men and realises that if his life is ever going to get better, something needs to change.
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  Brief Story From The Green Planet

  Review preview for Brief Story From The Green Planet

  Whatever you expected to happen is not about to do so.

  When Tania finds out that her grandma has spent her final years in the caring company of a cute purple alien, she embarks on a journey through small-town Argentina with two close friends to deliver the creature back to its origins.

A–Z of Outfest Los Angeles 2019 reviews →

Features

• Out in the rising sun
  Graham Kolbeins on capturing the passions and politics of outsider communities in Queer Japan
• Beyond the garden
  Flavio Alves on telling authentic stories, representing violence, and The Garden Left Behind
• Cultivating a story
  Flavio Alves on the lives of trans women and undocumented immigrants, and The Garden Left Behind
• In dreams
  River Gallo on Ponyboi, telling intersex stories and the importance of fantasies
• Secret lives, secret loves
  The hidden history of Hollywood lesbians.