ANIMAL PRIDE

Canada | 2024 | 49 minutes | Dir. Rio Mitchell

In this super fun, eye opening documentary, Connel Bradwell, a queer naturalist, challenges mainstream biology’s blindspot for queer behavior in nature. Schooled in the birds and the bees, survival of the fittest, and The Origin of Species, Connel explores the disconnective fallacy: how can humans be queer, while animals supposedly aren’t?

ÁHKUIN

Official Selection, 2025 Indigenous Voices Series

Finland | 2024 | 20 minutes
Dir. Radio-JusSunná / Sunná Nousuniemi, Guhtur Niillas Rita Duomis / Tuomas Kumpulainen

With the singular Sámi oral storytelling tradition of joik at its center, ÁHKUIN is a visual and musical call-and-response between a grandmother and her descendants. Archival interviews and the joik of Maarit-áhkku (queer director Sunná Máret Nousuniemi’s grandmother) unspool as a connective thread across time, inviting us through a portal into this corner of Sápmi. Here, the rhythms of time are set by the daily tasks that assured the survival of those who came before.

As in Indigenous communities the world over, colonization has profoundly shaped recent Sámi history through stories of loss. Drawing aesthetic inspiration from sources as diverse as duodji (Sámi handicrafts and land-based knowledge systems), the work of David Lynch, and the environmentally focused, community-based art of Niillas Holmberg, ÁHKUIN presents a Sámi story with lessons for a new era defined by giving and receiving.

MOSS TIME, CRIP TIME

USA | 2024 | 14 minutes | Dir. Cynthia Ling Lee

Reveling in micro-movement and lingering in moss-time, this dance film embodies gratitude to moss as beloved teacher of lessons in crip survival and thriving. Celebrate smallness. Practice patience. Grow only when there is enough resource. Nestle in the warmth and safety of the boundary layer. Survive in the most unexpected places. (Contains experimental audio description and open captions.)