My Queer Career Winners for 2024!

My Queer Career Winners

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

Our 2024 My Queer Career night was full of joy celebrating our wonderful queer artists and their careers in film.

You can see the full photo library from our 2024 My Queer Career night here, thanks to our friends at The Aperture Club!

Best Film

Marungka Tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black) – (Written and directed by Matthew Thorne, Derik Lynch and produced by Matthew Thorne, Patrick Grahams)

Yankunytjatjara man Derik Lynch sets out on a roadtrip from life in Adelaide, back home to his remote Anangu Community, as memories from his childhood return.

• $3000 cash from The Stephen Cummins Film Trust
• $2000 worth of legal advice from JP Media Law
• Automatic Entry in the Iris Prize, the world richest prize for LGBTIQ+ short film

Best Screenplay

Amanda Kaye – Good Times and That’s Okay

A 70 year-old closeted woman has to confront her faith as she learns what true love is from a sex worker named Destiny.

• $750 cash from Event Cinemas George Street

Emerging Performer

Mish Keating – Hyperconnect

Remy is confronted with the realities of post-lockdown life when communication with their online best friend begins to break down.

• Access to NIDA Open Courses up to the value of $500

Emerging Filmmaker

Jim Muntisov – Hyperconnect

Remy is confronted with the realities of post-lockdown life when communication with their online best friend begins to break down..

• Panavision camera hire, valued at $5000

Audience Award

Marungka Tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black) – (Written and directed by Matthew Thorne, Derik Lynch and produced by Matthew Thorne, Patrick Grahams)

Yankunytjatjara man Derik Lynch sets out on a roadtrip from life in Adelaide, back home to his remote Anangu Community, as memories from his childhood return.

• $5000 of Post Production support from Spectrum Films

My Queer Career 2024 Jury

Timothy Despina Marshall

Timothy is an award-winning queer writer/director. In 2013, his short film Gorilla won the Iris Prize. His next short, Followers, screened at Sundance, SXSW, and MIFF in 2015. Timothy has been selected to attend Screen Australia’s Talent USA program and the 2018 Film Independent Directing Lab. In the Room Where He Waits is his first feature.

Sophia Shek

Sophia Shek (they/them) is a Scottish-Hong Konger producer of independent films and documentaries that explore queer and diaspora identities. Feature films I Miss You When I See You (2018), directed by Simon Chung, and with Taiwanese-American director Emily Ting Go Back to China (2019) have both been featured in multiple film festivals (SXSW, Seattle International Film Festival, Melbourne Queer Film Festival and Queer Screen’s Mardi Gras Film Festival).

Michael Sun

Michael Sun is a critic and essayist whose work revolves around queerness, memory, and internet ephemera. He currently works in culture and lifestyle at The Guardian, where he recently hosted the online culture podcast Saved for Later. His writing on film and music has also been published in The Saturday Paper, The Monthly, ABC Arts, Esquire, Sydney Review of Books, Australian Book Review, Vice, The Age, and many more. In his spare time, he designs posters for events, lovers, friends, and enemies. He writes a monthly column for Shameless where he cosplays as an agony aunt.

My Queer Career Finalists | Mardi Gras Film Festival 2024

Cold Water
In St Kilda, an elderly woman’s peaceful retirement is interrupted when her husband takes up a bizarre new hobby.

Cusp
As the dust settles on her goodbye party, Nora must face her best friend Maude and come to terms with what it means to leave her other half behind.

CUT
Teenager Daniel struggles to juggle his different identities, between his relationship with his Orthodox Jewish father, his secret lover Isaac and his edgelord classmates with burgeoning neo-Nazi sympathies.

Good Times and That’s Okay
A 70 year-old closeted woman has to confront her faith as she learns what true love is from a sex worker named Destiny.

Hyperconnect
Remy is confronted with the realities of post-lockdown life when communication with their online best friend begins to breakdown

Marungka Tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black)
Yankunytjatjara man Derik Lynch sets out on a roadtrip from life in Adelaide, back home to his remote Anangu Community, as memories from his childhood return.

The Pansy of Pickadee
A bittersweet line-drawn animation that celebrates a brave queer hero who saves a small Victorian Town on the brink of disaster while indulging the love of saucy rhyming couplets.