In digital format, accessible to all audiences and available nationwide. This is what the next edition of the Barcelona International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, FIRE!!, will look like. The event will be held from 10 to 20 September at Filmin.es and Filmin.cat, both of which can be accessed with a standard platform subscription or by means of a temporary subscription.
To whet your appetite, the organisation has announced four of this year’s main titles in an edition which, as always, will combine the full-length fiction film, documentary and short film sections “East of Eden” and “Trans Screen”.
Of the three full-length films included in the pre-announcement, Isabel Sandoval’s Lingua franca (Philippines, 2019) is worth highlighting. The film tells the story of a Filipino transgender woman who lives in New York City, where she must use all her wits to avoid deportation. We will also discover Rialto (Ireland, 2019), Peter Mackie Burns’ intimate portrait of a male crisis based on the case of Colm, a 40-year-old man who, following the loss of his job and the death of his father, finds solace in the arms of a young male prostitute. Love between two men is also the thread that runs through the third great novelty, Los fuertes (Chile, 2019), a story created by Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo in which the tenderness of the relationship contrasts with the protagonists’ strength of character.
In addition, there will be no shortage of documentaries. The list in this first pre-announcement for the FIRE!! festival ends with Welcome to Chechnya, the winner of the Sundance Best Documentary Award, which revolves around the struggle of the LGBTI community in the Russian republic of Chechnya.
This year’s edition will pay tribute to Argentine indie director Marco Berger with the premiere of his most recent film, El cazador, and screenings of two of his best films: Taekwondo and Un rubio.
Regarding the parallel activities, FIRE!! attendees will have the opportunity to attend an online professional conference on the production, distribution and screening of LGBTI films and enjoy various interviews with some of the directors of the films to be screened in the festival.
The festival organisers will confirm the rest of the programme, as well as the conditions for accessing the online platform, in late August.