Be challenged by these conversation-starters at Mardi Gras Film Festival 2022

If you love when a film hits you like a freight train or leaves you questioning the fabric of the universe, then these conversation-starters cannot be missed.

Have you ever left the cinema thinking, what the heck did I just watch?! Maybe you headed straight to the bar for a drink afterwards, so you could debrief with your friends or even just by yourself. Our program this year has some stellar films that will leave you with plenty to talk about afterwards.

With conversation-starters from the outrageously explicit Raw! Uncut! Video! to the outrageously heretical Benedetta, these films will have you thinking differently about belief, winning, perfection, pleasure, and community.

Manscaping – Following a Black American visual artist, a trans barber and Sydney-based Naked Barber, Manscaping explores what barbershops could be when created by queer folks. Watch them build safe spaces for queer folks to bare their souls (and bodies) through art, kink-play and open conversations.

Benedetta – Director Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct) delivers a violent, sexual tale of a 17th-century nun with visions of Jesus that propel her to seek pleasures of the flesh and vengeance on her enemies. From an illicit lesbian affair to a sacrilegious sex toy and brutal punishments on all sides, even the Black Death can’t stop Benedetta from reaching for power.

The Novice – You’ve never seen a sports movie quite like The Novice. A powerful thriller about Alex, a queer rower at university whose commitment to winning at all costs, spirals into a dangerous obsession.

Raw! Uncut! Video! – “A camera can make you immortal. Would you like a little bit of video immortality?” In the late 70s, Jack Fritscher and Mark Hemry created a leather-focused, fetishistic and sex-positive production studio. Highly explicit and with more fetishes than you could poke a stick at, this doco is controversial and arousing.

The Divide – With a healthy dose of gallows humour, The Divide follows unmoored Raf as she enters a beleaguered French hospital needing care. With a broken arm and broken heart, she hopes to woo back her despondent wife but Paris erupts in protests around them and the overstretched ER comes under siege.

The Perfect David – With atmospheric cinematography and a pulsating electro score, this compelling character-driven drama delivers a chilling insight into a body and mind pushed beyond its limits.