Set during a tumultuous period of FrenchCanadian history, Funkytown follows the lives of eight people who are linked to a world famous Montreal nightclub called The Starlight in the late 1970s, when disco, casual sex, cocaine, and corruption reigned supreme. The action pivots around Bastien (Patrick Huard), a larger-than-life TV personality with a heroic appetite for booze, drugs, women, and outlandish clothes. We also follow aspiring singer Adriana, who has her sights set on record producer Gilles as her ticket to fame, and club dancer Tino, who becomes confused about his sexuality when he meets the openly gay Jonathan. By 1980, as the disco lifestyle fades, the characters feel the hangover acutely and are forced to make some difficult life choices. With many characters based on real-life figures from the era, Funkytown is a realistic portrait of Montreal.

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A beautifully told love story of what happens when one woman finally follows her heart. Mia and Frida meet for the first time at their respective parents’ engagement party. As their eyes meet over the champagne toast, both women recognise a deep attraction for each other. But standing in their way is Tim, Mia’s long term boyfriend and business partner, who has just asked Mia to marry him. Thrown together by circumstance, Mia finds it hard to resist acting on her desires for the beautiful and openly gay Frida. Although she insists it was just a one-time thing, she is drawn to the other woman as strongly as Frida is drawn to her. Realising the love and acceptance she experiences with Frida is what she truly wants in life, Mia’s actions have the potential to turn everyone’s lives upside down. How far will she go to keep the woman of her dreams? A beautiful and sensual film told elegantly by Keining with strong performances by all involved. (Description courtesy of Emma Smart, BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.)

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Look at Me Again is a road movie that whisks us away to the wild, semi-arid expanse of north-eastern Brazil. Our tough, cool travelling companion is Silvyo Luccio (‘… I was born a woman, became a lesbian and am now a man’), a thinker in the throes of transition and transformation who finds himself on a journey back into his religious-fundamentalist, deeply prejudiced, traditionalist past. At the heart of old wounds, humiliation and trauma lies an anxiously awaited encounter with a daughter and the hope of familial reconciliation. Look at Me Again portrays a vibrant human being full of resilience, who has broken free of the sexual catechism’s stale trinity of hetero-homo-bisexuality in order to set off on a different path in search of new horizons. Before him lies a baking hot road through regions marked by grinding poverty, ardent religious faith, superstition and bloated machismo, as well as several encounters with some extraordinary people. (Description courtesy of the Berlinale: The Berlin International Film Festival.)

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