BFI Flare: LGBTQIA Film Festival announces opening and closing night films

BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA Film Festival has announced the opening and closing night films of the festival.

The queer festival has also unveiled a centrepiece film that will be screened. The festival runs at BFI Southbank and on the BFI Player from 15-26 March.

Getting its international premiere at BFI Flare is Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s resonant Sundance award-winning documentary, The Stroll. The film tells the history of New York City’s Meatpacking District from the perspective of the trans women of colour who work and live there.

Lovell, who narrates the piece, reunites with her sisters to recount their experiences and the building of a trans rights movement.

It won the U.S Documentary Special Jury Award: Clarity of Vision at last month’s Sundance Film Festival. It will debut on 15 March.

Closing the festival is Hannes Hirsch’s debut feature, Drifter, which gets its UK premiere at BFI Flare. It plays on on Saturday 25 March. This coming-of-age story focuses on 22-year-old Moritz who moves to Berlin to be with his boyfriend.

A synopsis reads: “When the relationship quickly falls apart, he begins an odyssey of new relationships in a city full of possibilities, discovering the joys of sexual abandon and with each new encounter.”

Through a series of eye-opening experiences, Moritz learns to understand himself and becomes sexually and emotionally confident.

“Drifter is a refreshing and authentic look at queer lives, imbued with the excitement of this generation’s ways of being,” the synopsis closed.

Hirsch has described the film as “my personal love letter to Berlin’s queer scene, but it was also only possible with the broad support from the community.”

Also getting its UK premiere on Tuesday 21 March is Flare’s centrepiece presentation – Who I Am Not. Tünde Skovrán’s intimate documentary follows two intersex South Africans and the challenges they face navigating binary sex and gender systems.

Skovrán added Who I Am Not gives a voice to a “long ignored and mostly silent” section of the world’s population.”

BFI Flare’s senior programmer, Michael Blyth said the films “offer a fascinating cross-section of queer identities.” He added that each is “radically different in both style and content.

They “explore what it takes to find your voice, to claim your space, and to choose your family.”

BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival will reveal its full programme on Wednesday 15 February.