XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin 2023: A Diverse Program of Queer Life Plans and Possibilities

It’s all about this:
Friendship and solidarity between women. Man-sized slugs that you can easily wrap around your neck. Desire. body cult. Hedonism. And of course: absurdity.

What you need to know about the film:
Sophie Koko Gate studied animation at the renowned Royal College of Art. Already in her graduation film HALF WET, she explored possible forms of social interaction and aging in her original visual language, in which everything is wet – perhaps fluid – and in pink-pink tones that go beyond common beauty norms. – MK

Termin beim 17. XPOSED
Thursday, June 15, 6 p.m., Moviemento (Opening Night Shorts – Divergence)

It’s all about this:
The burning desire to have a child – seen in the media, it is primarily defined as a female desire, although there are enough men who suffer from involuntary childlessness. Pedro Neves Marques BECOMING MALE IN THE MIDDLE AGES takes on the subject. And does so by bringing together a queer and a straight perspective. In the hetero couple, he is the one who wants children, she only tries it for him. Even in a homosexual couple, there is only one partner who wants to be a father, but rightly so. He also wants the most physical experience possible and has the fertilized egg cell briefly placed in the body, where it should at least trigger a feeling of pregnancy for a short time.

What you need to know about the film:
Basically, both constellations – and also a sequence that takes up the debate about in-vitro meat – are about the human need to have children and the (im)possibility of fulfilling it with the help of technical progress the extended concept of family. BECOMING MALE IN THE MIDDLE AGES is also wonderfully reduced and sensually photographed and concentrated. The notion that queer partnerships have far less difficulty adapting to new technological means and are more likely to capitalize on them resonates. – MK

Termin beim 17. XPOSED
Saturday, June 17, 2023, 2 p.m., Moviemento 1 (Shorts 4 – LOST AND FOUND)

It’s all about this:
In AMAZON WOMAN, the head of the busy animation film director Anna Vasof becomes an experiment itself: Instead of tapping on her smartphone, Vasof taps her own face, the head-sized smartphone watches impassively. Or: Vasof’s head is the tea bag, which is repeatedly dipped into hot water; the teabag sits loosely on her shoulders. And so forth.

What you need to know about the film:
AMAZON WOMAN can of course be enjoyed as a simple joke, but it can also be seen as a metaphor for alienation. After all, many of us (everyday Amazons?) are constantly doing simple things without consciously reflecting on them. The mobile phone episode in particular invites such considerations: How conscious is the look at the mobile phone, who is actually checking whom here? And: is the cell phone really the object and the human being the subject? – MK

Termin beim 17. XPOSED
Saturday, June 17, 2023, 2 p.m., Moviemento 1 (Shorts 4 – LOST AND FOUND)

It’s all about this:
Halim (Saleh Bakri) and his wife Mina (Lubna Azabal) are a tight-knit team: not only do they run one of the last traditional caftan shops in the medina of Salé, a city in north-western Morocco, they have also supported each other in all walks of life – and that, although Mina knows inside that the beloved partner actually desires men. The relationship between the two is shaken when the beautiful trainee Youssef (Ayoub Missioui) starts working in the kaftan shop.

What you need to know about the film:
Starring prominently with the Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri and the Belgian actress Lubna Azabal, Maryam Touzani’s THE BLUE DES CAFTANS lives from the sensuality of the image design and its focus on the fine, flowing fabrics, the beading sweat in the hammam and the beauty of all three main actors in general. The Oscar shortlist candidate doesn’t always strike a fine balance between emotional kitsch and convincing drama, but the incredibly familiar relationship between the couple is staged in such a nuanced way that it’s easy to ignore. – MK

Termin beim 17. XPOSED
Friday, June 16, 9:10 p.m., Wolf cinema

It’s all about this:
A young director remembers the preparations for his horror film. In first-person form, as if he were reciting his diary entries, he tells in detail about the auditions he made for a large number of young men and how he made them his ideal protagonists in Angel 69, as the young man calls himself on social media had chosen. Angel 69 beguiles him with its androgynous and melancholic nature. The director makes a large number of test recordings of him and also accompanies him in his everyday life on video, which is used as material in the documentary film, a hybrid of documentary and fictional. The result is an unusual cinematic work that celebrates the art of filmmaking itself, but is also a testament to the current generation of Colombians who see little future prospects for themselves. There is something morbid about the film, but at the same time touching.

What you need to know about the film:
Director Theo Montoya gets personal in this cinematic experiment, but at the same time manages to take stock not only of the youth of his home country of Colombia, but also to capture an apocalyptic mood that parts of the younger generation around the world will identify with. ANHELL69 is the director’s first feature film, which premiered at the Venice Festival last year and can already look back on a certain festival career. – TV

Termin beim 17. XPOSED
Thursday, June 15, 8:15 p.m., Moviemento cinema