Queer stories in fantastic cinema can look very different.

This year, three films in the programme approach queer experience from different directions: forbidden desire, homophobia as horror, and camp Gothic comedy.

Frost

29 October · 20:00 · Kino 2

In Pavle Vučković’s Frost, a police detective arrives in an isolated Serbian village to investigate the disappearance of a young woman.

The case leads her into a community shaped by pagan traditions, black magic and local beliefs. At the centre of the disappearance is a forbidden relationship that the village tries to understand through myth, fear and shame.

Frost begins as a police thriller and gradually moves into folk horror. Queer desire sits at the centre of the mystery, tied to the stories the community tells about what is acceptable and what is not.

Read more about Frost →

Don’t Come Out / No Salgas

29 October · 14:00 · Kino 2

In Victoria Linares Villegas’ Don’t Come Out (No Salgas), Liz is a closeted medical student in the Dominican Republic, still grieving the violent death of her girlfriend Wendy.

Believing the violence around her may be rooted in homophobia, she hides further. She dates a man, tries not to draw attention to herself and builds a life that feels safer from the outside.

But the fear does not disappear.

Don’t Come Out pushes homophobia into horror territory, almost treating it like a sickness or a curse moving through a community. It is repeated, passed on and reinforced until people begin policing themselves and each other.

When Liz starts to feel drawn to someone new, hiding becomes harder.

The film is not simply about coming out. It is also about what fear does to people when being visible can have real consequences.

Read more about Don’t Come Out →

The Restoration at Grayson Manor

31 October · 16:40 · Kino 2

In Glenn McQuaid’s The Restoration at Grayson Manor, Boyd Grayson is a pianist and spoiled heir who enjoys provoking his mother Jacqueline.

After an accident leaves him without his hands, she has him fitted with experimental prosthetics controlled by his subconscious.

This goes badly.

Soon severed hands are moving around the house, people are dying and the relationship between mother and son breaks down further.

McQuaid takes a different route into queer horror. The Restoration at Grayson Manor works through camp, Gothic melodrama, black comedy, repression and family legacy. It is also very aware of how funny all of this can be.

Read more about The Restoration at Grayson Manor →

Three films, and three very different ways of bringing queer experience into fantastic cinema.

One through folklore and forbidden desire. One through the fear and violence of homophobia. And one through camp, family drama and severed hands.