All the short films at the Mardi Gras Film Festival 2022

For the Mardi Gras Film Festival 2022, we have gathered more than 60 short films into different packages for your viewing consumption.

There are short films focused on lesbians, gay men and transgender and gender-diverse people. Plus, entire packages devoted to guy-on-guy action, documentary short films about the queer experience from Australia and around the world and queer family ties.

And to cap it all off, we have the annual My Queer Career competition.

Asia Pacific Shorts – Bringing together some of the best LGBTIQ+ short films from our Asia Pacific neighbours, this diverse collection features And We Collide, about a fragile romance between a wannabe astronaut and a village farm boy; Kiran, from Pakistan, about a henna artist searching for a space for herself; Mother-in-law sees Min-jin entertaining her girlfriend’s mother after a surprise visit; My Mother’s Girlfriend follows two working-class women in love as they enjoy a day out; Sunday, the 2020 KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival Jury Award winner; and Undercurrent, set on a winter’s night in 1979 Taiwan, explores budding desire.

Gay+ Shorts – From the gorgeous animation Flora Borealis, composed of 17,000 hand-drawn frames; an energetic tale of Habib & The Thief; the World Premiere of Firsts from New Zealand about a closeted Chinese international student; Headlock where an introverted high school wrestler searches for acceptance; On My Way where three men find themselves taking a direction they didn’t expect; and Operator, a quirky Irish comedy about a self-obsessed call centre worker dealing with a personal heartbreak while on shift as the world crumbles around him… due to a zombie apocalypse.

Guy on Guy Shorts – Get ready to get hot and heavy with these steamy, sexy guy-on-guy short films. Featuring Chasin’, about a summer’s day hook up; in Eden, a restless young man roves in the gay hotspots of an unnamed city at night; The Night Train, where Oskar finds a like-minded companion on a train; Trade, exploring gay hookup app culture; Limits, showcasing two men and a challenging game; BONHOMME, featuring an eye-opening dare on a rugby player’s night out; Mountain Lodge, an intriguing experimental film; and Stephen & James: Best Girlfriends, a lovely homage to 90s sexual liberation.

Lesbian+ Shorts – This set of shorts will bring on the wanderlust for excitement and adventure of first love, getting to know you, and the feelings of discovery with someone you thought you knew so well. Selected highlights include Blue Moon which follows two women in sundrenched Los Angeles; Dragged Up, with a shy non-binary teenager who uses drag to find the confidence they need to show their family who they truly are; and All the Colours, in which creative duo The Samaya Wives capture a snapshot of love and life in the pandemic world.

My Queer Career – Australia’s richest queer short film prize with over $16,000 worth of cash and support to be won.

The shorts in the running include queer surf romance Beautiful They; the World Premiere of Nelson as he dares to be intimate with a stranger online and the documentary A Big Life, the secret history of trans and queer Australia. Are You Still Watching uses animation to illustrate how lockdown and binge-watching can lead to very queer fantasies; Dwarf Planet, about a teen’s birthday encounter with a male sex worker; Illustrating Sam Newtown, about long distance connections; Sunburn about a healing roadtrip and friendship being tested; and We’re Doing Well an all-too-relatable comedy about friendship and housesharing!

Oz Doc Shorts – The inaugural Oz Doc Shorts features compelling Australian documentary short films together for the first time. In The Space Around You, we follow queer couple Sarah and Bec, who collaborate, perform and live together pre and post-pandemic; Deafying Gravity is the unique story of Katia Schwartz, a deaf and queer professional aerial performer; Past Continuous covers one inspiring couple who manage to stay together against all odds; Star Man, a documentary following the founder of the Start Observer more than 40 years ago; and Acts For The Invisible, in which a philosophical fashion designer loses his life partner and is propelled towards an entirely new life far from the fashion world. 

Queer Doc Shorts – From Italy, Tanzania, the US and the UK, these Queer Doc Shorts will give you insight into the LGBTIQ+ experience around the world. Ten young queer Tanzanians meet to share stories of violence and harassment, but also of dreams and hopes in Not in Tanzania; in Senior Prom, a group of queer elders attend a prom at their convalescent home; Coded: The Hidden Love of J.C. Leyendecker, delving into the coded imagery of J.C. Leyendecker which laid the foundation for LGBTQ representation in advertising today; Trans Happiness is Real follows a trans activist as they chronicle their street art activism with unwavering but not untested hope; and In the Image of God follows the struggles and transitions of intersex Jewish Rabbi, Levi.

Shorts About Family Ties – These short films show that family means something different to everyone, especially in the LGBTIQ+ community. In Boom and Bloom, a father and son try to bond on a hike in the Austrian Alps; an interracial lesbian couple use straight talk and a little bit of cannabis to ease tensions in Blunt; a breakdown on the way to the airport in Borekas provides a father and son with an opportunity to reconnect; after moving to Los Angeles, Esi discovers a new community in Sunday’s Child; and in Baba, we follow a Libyan teen as he attempts to escape to the pulsing queer world of Manchester.

Trans and Gender Diverse Shorts – Assembling films that put trans and gender diverse stories front and centre, this package includes the multi award-winning God’s Daughter Dancing from South Korea; Croatian animation All These Sensations in My Belly which follows Matia as she seeks a genuine connection; Almost A Year in which the overlapping routines of three New Yorkers changes unexpectedly as the pandemic takes hold; Haze, that shows what happens when Haze’s private recordings of their body end up in front of their mother; and Shedding Skin which finds Alicia connecting with her neighbour and starting to find comfort in her own skin.