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Queer Film Festival Utrecht
Friday, 29 August 2025 until Friday, 05 September 2025
Since 2019 Queer Film Festival Utrecht is the LHBTQI+ film festival of Utrecht. Throughout the year we show you a wide selection of films, talks and more.
During QFFU diversity, inclusivity and accessibility are central. With our films and side programs we tell stories from different corners of the queer community. We do not only show in cinemas, but also on the streets, in cafes and community centers, through the inner city and in different neighborhoods. In short: we see Utrecht as one big cinema.
Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same
Two Times João Liberada
Life Is Not a Competition, But I'm Winning
Roze Bubbel — Marleen Danhof & Afra Rijkhoff (Netherlands, 30 mins)
In this documentary, filmmakers Afra Rijkhoff and Marleen Danhof investigate why rainbow families often face unequal treatment and must constantly adjust themselves to participate in society. Afra herself was raised by two mothers. Her youth felt like a big, warm, and loving pink bubble. But when she learned about the societal hurdles her parents had to overcome to have a child, her bubble burst. Now she is determined to tell the story of rainbow families. A film about what happens when you don’t fit in with the image of the ‘standard’ family.
Netelroes — Tim van Loon (Netherlands, 15 mins)
Netelroes takes you out of your human perspective and places you in the middle of a nettle field next to the water treatment plant in Utrecht Overvecht. The film invites you to reconsider the sting of a nettle: as a moment of disruption and connection, a sensual entry point to the body — a possibility for closeness and intimacy with the more-than-human other. As an encounter.
Boxing Against the Binary — Esmée van Loon (Netherlands, 17 mins)
Discover a unique gym in Rotterdam: the Queer Gym. A place for non-normative bodies to be active, both mentally and physically. A lot of people do not feel comfortable in typical sports environments that often hone in on heteronormative beauty ideals and fitness goals. This is why Romy founded this gym—a safe space where queer Rotterdammers can truly enjoy sports. Through intimate conversations with members, trainers, and Romy, this documentary shows why such a place is a real physical necessity for the queer community.
this is (not) your ocean (Aquest (no) és el teu oceà) — Jordi Wijnalda (Netherlands, 14 mins)
Queer bodies attract, fall in love, falter, perish. Are our bodies more vulnerable, and therefore our loves, too? A poetic video letter; a critical research essay; an intimate experiment of image and sound, of heart, head and hormones; and a loving ode to those who have passed on before memories together could be made. Bittersweet and vulnerable, this film is dedicated to loves lost and memories unfinished.
Here, Queer and Totally Sincere
Hey dad — WeiFan Wang (Taiwan/United Kingdom, 6 mins.)
How do you come out to your father? The protagonist has been practising for twenty years now, but maybe being candid isn’t the best idea. He decides to stop, resets the countdown—beginning another twenty-year cycle. Maybe by then it will be the right time. A moving student film that understands the difficulty of showing your true self to those around you.
Dragfox — Lisa Ott (United Kingdom, 8 mins.)
A singing drag-dressing fox voiced by Sir Ian McKellen and RuPaul’s Drag Race UK star Divina De Campo? Oh, how we love animation! In Dragfox, Sam’s search for identity gets interrupted by a mysterious neighbourhood fox. Together, they embark on a magical journey to discover the surprising things they might have in common and how to celebrate the ways in which they differ. A joyful and musical stop-motion expression of identity.
Carrotica — Daniel Sterling-Altman (Germany, 13 mins.)
16-year-old Nadav is writing an explicit gay erotica in secret in his bedroom. Meanwhile, his mother Shari, a middle-aged single woman, is busy working and falling in love with a sexy carrot. Winner of the Cristal for a Graduation Film at the 2024 Annecy Festival, Carrotica is a horny, queer tale about the longing for intimacy.
Dear Dating Diary — Floor van der Doelen (The Netherlands, 2 mins.)
Who doesn’t like a mystery? A sweet student film that takes the form of a poem about dating where love is a riddle to solve.
Airborne — Nigel Lievaart (The Netherlands/Belgium, 10 mins.)
Jason has been secretly in love with his best friend Niels for ten years. He knows it will never work out, but Jason still can’t give up on his dream. However, it is time for Jason to let go of his unrequited feelings when Niels wants to confess something to him.
Luz Diabla — Gerva Canda / Paula Boffo / Patricio Plaza (France, 11 mins.)
Martín, a flamboyant urban raver, is involved in an accident on his way to a party in the middle of the Argentine Pampas. Finding refuge in a mysterious country grocery store, sheltered by two strange locals, Martín’s paranoia begins to take over. As the hours progress, his perception begins to distort, unleashing disturbing visions that force him to confront the supernatural forces hiding in the night. A neon-coloured, stylised fever dream/nightmare.
Gardening — Sarah Beeby (United Kingdom, 14 mins.)
A cinematic journey ten years in the making, Gardening grew into a tale about director Sarah Beeby’s personal quest for healing following an experience of sexual assault. In this surreal, fantastical animation, a woman who has been sexually assaulted retreats into the garden of her mind. Searching for answers and struggling to do ‘the right thing’, she realises that she must regain her voice and find new paths to healing, before she and her garden are destroyed completely.
Two Black Boys in Paradise — Baz Sells (United Kingdom, 9 mins.)
Two Black boys embark on a journey of self-acceptance. Their love for each other and their refusal to hide it lands them in a paradise free of shame and judgement. Based on Dean Atta’s poem, Baz Sells’ stop-motion short is a reflection on human love, acceptance, and how racism and homophobia doesn’t belong in paradise.
Lloyd Wong, Unfinished — Lesley loksi Chan (Canada, 29 mins)
In the early 1990s, Lloyd Wong began making a work based on his experiences living with AIDS in Toronto. He passed before completing it. His work-in-progress was considered “long-lost” until it resurfaced at The ArQuives. In this documentary, Lesley Loksi Chan combines Wong’s footage with fragments of her notes to reflect on what it means to inherit images from queer communities and to attempt to understand someone through multiple takes. Rough and unprocessed, this film explores the meaning of incompletion.
comme tous les garçons — Morisha Moodley (United Kingdom, 11 mins)
comme tous les garçons meditates on images and ideas of masculinity and transmasculine identity. The film combines found footage and personal archive in an act of assemblage that mirrors the erratic and eternal piecing together of a queer identity. Showing, too, how this process first consumes, then corrupts and queers. The film attempts to trace a story of becoming, laying bare the moments of conflict along the way. What does it mean to be, or (want to) become like all the boys? And how does the spectre of Whiteness haunt this wanting?
Atopia — Olivier de Vos (Belgium, 18 mins)
An introspective essay about the search for a place that exists between reality and imagination, made up of dreams and a longing for gender fluidity. Through a multilayered construction of archive materials, digitised as well as contemporary pictures, and original footage, De Vos charts a poetic journey to the beaches of Atopia—a placeless place, brimming with both mesmerising potentiality and impossibility.
Lasting Marks — Charli Shackleton (United Kingdom, 15 mins)
The story of sixteen men put on trial for sadomasochism in the dying days of Thatcher’s Britain was told by the police, the prosecution and the tabloid press—but not by those in the dock. In this vertical documentary, one of the 16 men recounts the story of this persecution, accompanied by archival documents that detail the court case, the media’s perspective, and the public’s opinion.
The 10 Minute Challenge Premieres
En ik zag dat het goed was — Bart Seijbel (The Netherlands, 10 mins.)
When Lotte’s father has problems with her fiancé, Pastor Van der Laan (Jan Kooijman) visits him to have an open conversation about faith and homosexuality. An intimate short drama that follows a man’s process as he contemplates the tension between the word of God and the love for his child.
Infect Me Gently — Can Bora (The Netherlands, 11 mins.)
An HIV-positive artist presents work created with his own blood—a visitor recoils, afraid he might “catch something.” This moment opens the door to the surreal, where a haunting figure drifts between exposure and erasure. An engagement with the concept of the Other as a reflection on the tension between contemporary medicine and social attitudes that remain stuck in outdated panic. Which is more contagious: the virus, or fear?
The Following — Jason Gwen (The Netherlands, 9 mins.)
A political sci-fi horror about induction into culture, the hypodermic needle theory—which stipulates that passive audiences can be predictably controlled as they are ‘injected’ with media messages—and preserving one’s character as an individual in a pre-existing world.
The Queer Box — Marta Morosi (The Netherlands, 11 mins.)
What does it mean to be queer in a world that only sees straight? In this exploration of queer visibility, four people who are often misread as straight reflect on their experience navigating heteronormative society, and the bittersweet privilege of being able to hide your queerness while constantly feeling the need to explain why you belong to the queer community.
Beyond the Mirror — Renée Hildesheim (The Netherlands, 11 mins.)
A poetic documentary following performer, thinker, and activist Renée on a personal and political journey through Amsterdam and Berlin. As an ongoing project to create layered, multifaceted portraits of individuals living beyond normative gender and sexual frameworks, this short is an intimate meditation on gender, space, and the desire to be truly seen.
VOGELAAR — Willemijn Debets (The Netherlands, 11 mins.)
A documentary portrait of Martha, a young artist and activist who devotes herself to the intricate study of bird anatomy to create life-sized replicas from materials she finds outside. In this short, her current project, a crow, takes shape right before our eyes as Martha reflects on her process. An ode to the art of looking closely and an invitation for kinship across species.
VLINDER — Yulai Smits (The Netherlands, 12 mins.)
In this hybrid documentary, we follow poet, writer, and fashion-icon Vlinder Verouden as she talks about her experiences now that she is in transition. As an ode to being queer, the film captures the feeling and beauty of this process and serves as a reminder that in the end—we are all in transition.