Frameline, the San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, now in its 49th year, is the world’s largest and longest running LGBTQ+ Film Festival. The 2025 queer film celebration is currently underway and running through June 28, 2025
This year’s program features close to 150 films from 40 countries, with 17 World Premieres, 2 International Premieres, 12 North American Premieres, and 11 US Premieres, and numerous West Coast, California, and Bay Area Premieres.
Among the film highlights:
Cejen Cernek Canak’s stirring Sandbag Dam (Croatia/Lithuania/Slovenia) which I reviewed via the Berlinale earlier in the year.
Another film I highly recommend is Addison Heimann’s deliciously insane second feature, Touch Me, which bowed at Sundance. You can watch my video chat with sexy lead Lou Taylor Pucci HERE.
One of the most potent features is Croatia’s Oscar submission, Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day, directed by Ivona Juka. I will be writing about this audacious film later this week. It was one of the very few entries I was not given access to in my extensive International Feature Oscar Analysis. And a film that should have received much more attention than it did and might have even made the short list.
For now, I can happily recommend the following:
Twinless
Writer-director-co-star James Sweeney’s hilarious and bittersweet tale of ID twin trauma-bonding, Twinless, won the Audience Award in the U.S. Dramatic category at Sundance. Co-lead actor Dylan O’Brien, who was also fab in last year’s Sundance fave Ponyboi, won U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting. He’s amazing in this gay-friendly film which will be released later this year.
Roman (O’Brien) meets Dennis (Sweeney) in a bereavement support group for survivors who have lost their ID twin. They bond big-time. Roman, who is straight and a bit dim, misses his gay brother, Rocky. Dennis (Sweeney) is gay and is also grieving his loss. We then flash back for a surprising plot reveal that triggers a darkly comic narrative shift.
Twinless is sure to be one of the most talked about queer film of 2025.
Plainclothes
Carmen Emmi’s intense, nuanced psychological drama, Plainclothes is set in the 1990s when AIDS still meant eventual death for many gay men and unless you lived in a major city, being gay meant staying in the closet—especially in deeply religious communities.
The film centers on a handsome undercover police officer whose job is to lure gay men into hooking up in public places and then arresting them. Note: this was a means used to entrap gays well into the 2000s.
Tom Blyth is Lucas a closeted cop who ends up in lust with one of his targets, Russell, played by Russell Tovey, who is, also, leading a double life.
Emmi’s non-linear narrative and shaky-cam style creates an atmosphere of paranoia and anxiety and the film builds to a tremendously satisfying finale.
Blyth delivers a powerful, award-worthy performance.
#300Letters
Gifted Argentinian filmmaker Lucas Santa Ana crafts a thought-provoking gem that should be required viewing for judgmental people so immersed in their bubble world they think they’re better than others.
Jero (Cristian Mariani) is a physically fit, non-committal gay who falls in love with Tom (Gastón Frías), an arrogant poet-wannabe. The two become social media stars as the ideal gay couple but, on their one-year anniversary, Tom dumps Jero, leaving him with only a box of 300 letters as explanation—one ostensibly written every day they spent together. This gimmicky device actually works, as the letters show just how two people can be in a relationship and feel the complete opposite of what the other is feeling.
#300Letters is refreshingly brutal, never feeling the need to wrap his story up in a bow but, instead, leaving the audience to ponder where they fit, in today’s divided world.
Some Nights I Feel Like Walking
Filipino helmer Petersen Vargas’s stylish, evocative feature Some Nights I Feel Like Walking captivates from start to finish, even when the narrative meanders. The film blends the dream-like (sometimes nightmarish) with gritty realism, telling a tale of a group of male prostitutes who must deal with the tragic loss of a friend. It’s queer Greek tragedy meets super gay Dickens.
Street-wise Uno (an excellent Jomari Angeles) meets jittery and troubled Zion (a riveting Miguel Odron), and sparks fly, but both seem apprehensive about taking things a step further. Two years later, they meet again as hustlers. The early scenes in the film create the sex worker Manila milieu of wait rooms, rest areas and porn theaters where these boys make their living. Uno leads his group of boys who aren’t very welcoming to outsider Zion. But when one of them OD’s, the gang must decide what to do with the body.
Vargas delves into the struggles these boys must face, even if the film too-often plays things safe. The moody atmosphere as well as the solid performance make it worthwhile.
A Night Like This
Borrowing from Before Sunrise, Liam Calvert’s A Night Like This pairs suicidal German actor Lukas (Jack Brett Anderson) with the seemingly straight entrepreneur Oliver (Alexander Lincoln). Both are teetering on the edge, for different reasons when they meet and slowly bond. Soon the bonding deepens.
The dashing Lincoln, who delivered such a powerhouse performance in the gay rugby drama In From the Side (2022) is especially strong here, diving into his role completely. His is a fascinating portrait of someone desperately needing to connect with another human. Jimmy Ericson also impresses as a homophobic, thieving teen who has a change of heart.
Went Up the Hill
Dacre Montgomery (Stranger Things) and Vicky Krieps (The Phantom Thread) play the estranged son and widow, Jack and Jill, of a deceased artist who took her own life Virginia-Woolf-style (walking into a body of water with rocks in pockets). Jack is a young gay man with relationship issues haunted by his mother’s giving him away when he was a toddler. Jill is so bereft with grief she sleeps in the same room as her wife, Elizabeth’s, coffin. Both characters are soon possessed by the ghost of Elizabeth who forces them to do some kinky things.
Went Up The Hill is supernatural weirdness, but the two leads keep us enthralled throughout.
There are many other films that you can experience both live in a theater and via streaming, so treat yourself.
For the schedule, tickets and more info visit https://www.frameline.org
