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Festival coverage

Queer East

17 April – 28 April 2024

The 2024 edition of London's annual celebration of LGBTQ+ films from the East opens with China's A Song Sung Blue and includes stories spanning 57 years of cinema and 10 countries. It also incorporates an exhibition, poetry and dance.

The festival runs from 17 to 28 April,

Other years (3)

Latest reviews

  • Bye Bye Love
    Review preview for Bye Bye Love

    Alternating between road movie formula and surrealist exploration of interior landscapes, Bye Bye Love is full of striking imagery, and it resolutely avoids playing by the rules.

    Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
    Two young people undertake a doomed summer road trip through Japan, which in turn reflects on the dissipating promise of 1960s counterculture and free love.
  • Abang Adik
    Review preview for Abang Adik

    There are no weak links in this film, but Kang Ren Wu’s performance is extraordinary.

    Jennie Kermode · 5 out of 5
    Abang and Adi are undocumented orphans in Malaysia. While the older brother, who is deaf mute, has resigned himself to a life of poverty, his younger sibling burns with indignation. A brutal accident upsets their relationship's fragile balance.
  • Summer Vacation 1999
    Review preview for Summer Vacation 1999

    Repeated shots of train tracks and the use of sound without the sight of the train (or, elsewhere, children) add to [the] impression of distance from the real world coupled with unstoppable movement through time.

    Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
    Summer vacation has emptied a Japanese boys' school of all but three boys. They have no families to return to for the summer, so they spend their days in the empty school. A darkness hangs over the three however: the suicide, three months earlier, of a classmate.
  • I Am What I Am
    Review preview for I Am What I Am

    Tamada uses the established language of romcoms, subverting it to express the ways that Kasumi finds fulfilment in life and to explore aspects of her journey towards true self-acceptance.

    Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
    Kasumi doesn't know what love is and she doesn't have any feeling of romance. Due to her sister's marriage, her mother arranged a formal marriage arrangement without her permission. At the meeting, she finds a man who is just seeking a friend.
  • Sara
    Review preview for Sara

    Delicately performed and quietly magical, this film is something special.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    A trans woman returns to her remote village upon her father's death to find her traumatised mother in desperate need of her help.
  • The Missing
    Review preview for The Missing

    Combining clever ideas with a deep current of emotional honesty, this is an unusual and powerful film.

    Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
    When an alien comes back to take him, a mouthless young man's life twists and turns as his memories untangle.