1. BPM
French writer/director Robin Campillo mesmerised audiences with the complex shifting ground of previous hit Eastern Boys, exploring loneliness, companionship, sex work and immigration. This time, he’s turned his attentions to the AIDS crisis in early '90s Paris and a group of loud and proud ACT UP activists pushing for action. Winning the Cannes Grand Jury Prize and the Queer Palm, it’s a heartbreaker that - as with Eastern Boys - is unapologetically erotic, relishing the queer gaze with a pumping soundtrack to match. 2. Beach Rats
Expanding on the sexual awakening themes of her feature debut It Felt Like Love, American writer/director Eliza Hittman announces a break out star in her Beach Rats lead Harris Dickinson. The English actor plays working class Brooklyn teenager Frankie. Hanging out with his boisterous straight mates during the day - all eager to display their masculinity like peacocks - he enters fumblingly into a relationship with a girl, but by night he’s cruising the internet and beachside beats for older men. 3. Call Me By Your Name
I Am Love director Luca Guadagnino - a guest of this year’s MIFF - delivers yet another sumptuous slice of joyous life in this big screen adaptation of André Acimen’s queer romance novel. Armie Hammer plays Oliver, a 20-something archaeology student who ends up falling for the teenaged son, Elio, of his Italy-based American tutor while on summer internship. An aching dance of repressed love gently unfurled, it’s a rare beauty blessed with impeccable performances.
4. Chavella
A figure of legendary status who may or may not have bedded politician’s wives, a Hollywood star and a world-famous artist, Chavela Vargas most definitely sank a great deal of tequila, shot some guns and sang her heart and soul out. Captivating millions, falling away and then coming back even bigger the sexually free Vargas is honoured by Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi’s soul-enriching doco. Born in Costa Rica and relocating to Mexico, she was an inspiration to so many, including Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar, living her life out and proud all the while defying labels. 5. The Death and Life of Marsha P Johnson
Documentary filmmaker David France delivered a powerful insight into the fight against AIDS with How To Survive a Plague and he’s at it again with another powerfully informative chapter in queer history. Marsha P Johnson was a prominent trans rights activist, a front-line Stonewall protestor and a much-loved figure on the New York scene during the 70s. Her shocking death, found drowned in the Hudson River, was ruled a suicide. About to retire, friend and Anti-Violence Project campaigner Victoria Cruz isn’t convinced and takes it upon herself to re-open the case. 6. A Fantastic Woman
Like Almodóvar, Chilean director Sebastián Lelio has a gift for sensitively conveying the stories of women living at the margins of society. Gloria was a fabulous ode to love and independence in older age, with A Fantastic Woman turning his attentions to transphobia. Trans actress and singer Daniela Vega delivers a stellar turn as a Marina, a young woman who refuses to be ground down by the abusive family of her older lover after he unexpectedly dies. Winning a brace of awards at the Berlinale, it occasionally blurs reality in technicolour fashion, but is always anchored in emotional truth.
7. God’s Own Country
Actor-turned-director Francis Lee’s remarkable debut, lit up with a harsh pastoral beauty, draws on his background growing up on a Yorkshire farm. featuring a breakout turn from an impressive Josh O'Connor as emotionally unavailable and overworked farmer Johnny, his life is transformed by the arrival of Romanian migrant worker Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu. At first antagonistic, an isolated Johnny is clearly drawn to the young ma, but can he open up enough to let in the simmering passion burning just beneath the surface? The awards keep coming, including at Berlin, Edinburgh, San Francisco’s Frameline and Sundance.
Lee is also a guest of MIFF this year.
8. My Friend Dahmer
Is a serial killer born evil? That’s the thorny question lurking behind director Marc Meyers’ My Friend Dahmer. Adapted from the graphic novel by John ‘Derf’ Backderf, who went to school with and befriended a socially ostracised Jeffrey Dahmer, it’s an uncomfortable stare into the dark heart of a monstrous man, convicted of 17 gruesome murders. Detailing his obsession with collecting and experimenting on roadkill. Dahmer is played with impressive conviction by former Disney star Ross Lynch. This is probably the most challenging film with queer themes at this year’s MIFF, though, in places, also blackly comic. 9. The Ornithologist
Set in the depths of Portugal’s remotest jungle, writer/director João Pedro Rodrigues’ surreal lost in the undergrowth adventure/spirit quest mischievously embraces religious iconography, tribal history and a lusty dose of Bacchanalian sacrilege. Ripped Frenchman Paul Hamy stars as the lost bird-watcher of the title, a semi-autobiographical stand-in for the director himself, a fact he plays with later in one of the auteur’s trademark games. That also includes some unholy fun with Xelo Cagiao’s deaf goatherd, of course named Jesus. 10. The Wound
Several wounds cut deep in South African director John Trengove’s startling feature debut. Most obviously there is the ritual circumcision of Xhosa teens in the Ukwaluka rite of passage it features. Then there’s the emotional scar carried by a closeted Xolani, played by out gay singer Nakhane Touré, in love with his fellow mentor Vija (Bongile Mantsai), a married man not above indulging with Xolani while away from home. And there’s the incursion of mentee Kwanda (Niza Jay Ncoyini), forcing his way into this delicate balance, upending everything. A coming-of-age film with bite.
MIFF runs from August 3-20, for more details click . Catch Stephen on Saturday August 5. 
