Film Fests
Queer at Fantastic Fest: 3 LGBTQ+ Movies That Should Be On Your Radar
On my first day at Fantastic Fest 2025, I locked eyes across the courtyard with a dude wearing an American flag-emblazoned t-shirt proudly proclaiming that he was a straight, white man (as if any part of that wasn’t self-evident). Arriving in Texas as an unmistakable lesbian is always a little nerve-wracking, even if Austin is a chill oasis in a blazing red desert, so the t-shirt and its intended message immediately put me on edge. As soon as I stepped into the theater, however, that chest-clench reaction subsided. This year’s Fantastic Fest line-up included a wealth of queer genre content from around the world, programmed by a team that is clearly committed to championing LGBTQ+ voices and content at a time when others seek to stifle them. These films are funny, campy, sexy, heartfelt, and often downright beautiful. More than anything, though, they are utterly, delightfully unapologetic.
I wasn’t able to catch every LGBTQ+ movie at the 2025 festival (one can only see so much if they wish to sleep), but here are three that I’m already desperate to rewatch.
1. Body Blow
Unlike the other entries on this list, Body Blow is not a horror movie, but this erotic thriller demands to be seen. Written and directed by Dean Francis, the film follows Aiden Hardwick (Tim Pocock), a disgraced Australian police officer who goes undercover in the local gay scene. On night one, he meets and falls for seductive bartender Cody (Tom Rodgers), a drug-addicted twink being pimped out by the crime lord of drag, Fat Frankie (Paul Capsis). Unfortunately, Aiden is both addicted to sex and trying desperately to go cold turkey, a combination that leads him to make some staggeringly bad decisions. Now blackmailed by Frankie, the repressed copper is drawn deeper into a seedy world of drugs, sex, money, kink—and cock cages.
In his introduction at Fantastic Fest, Francis called Body Blow a “dirty rotten queer noir,” and he nailed it with that description. The film has all the corruption and betrayal you expect from classic crime noir, only the city streets are bathed in dreamy neon light and there’s nary a heterosexual in sight. It’s deliciously sleazy and steamy, yet the central romance is surprisingly sweet, both actors delivering fully committed performances that are mesmerizing to watch. If you don’t go into Body Blow with a kink, you might leave with one, but you’ll love every minute all the same.
2. The Cramps: A Period Piece
While writer-director Brooke H. Cellars’ The Cramps: A Period Piece isn’t explicitly queer in its subject matter, its deeply queer sensibilities leave me with no choice but to include it on this list (it twisted my arm, truly). If John Waters made a body horror movie about monstrous menstruation, it would be The Cramps.
Newcomer Lauren Kitchen stars as Agnes Applewhite, a shy young woman yearning to break free from her repressive home life. A job at the local salon offers a taste of freedom, with owner Laverne Lancaster (Martini Bear) and her eclectic staff welcoming Agnes with open arms. There’s just one problem: Agnes experiences debilitating menstrual cramps that begin to manifest in violent ways. Some dudes are about to find out the hard way why people who menstruate complain about the cramps.
In our interview with Cellars, she described finding acceptance in the queer community that she didn’t find elsewhere. Her love and appreciation for the community is clearly felt in The Cramps, in which the salon staff are explicitly framed as a found family who help Agnes find her confidence and discover who she really is. Cellars’ casting of drag performers in prominent roles is also pure Waters, and it’s wonderful to see both bearded queens and drag kings represented (Cellars herself has a cameo as Agnes’ late father). The old-school practical effects, including visual references to The Blob and Vincent Price-starrer The Tingler, add to the campy, B-movie feel of the picture. The Cramps is for the girlies and the gays, and it’s a hoot and a half.
3. The Restoration at Grayson Manor
The terrible, awful idea that you won’t give your parents the grandchildren you owe them is a stick that’s been used to beat many a queer person over the years, myself included. For Boyd Grayson (Chris Colfer), the bisexual son of Jacqueline Grayson (the iconic Alice Krige), this is clearly an argument that’s been hashed out many times already. At the outset of The Restoration at Grayson Manor, he’s acting out, bringing men home to fuck in the foyer just to piss his mother off. Their vicious sniping is abruptly cut off when a moving accident slices Boyd’s hands clean off, leaving him at the mercy of his mother and the team of experts she’s brought in to help build him a new pair.
Irish director Glenn McQuaid, who also co-wrote the script with horror author Clay McLeod Chapman, has clearly watched a lot of American soap operas, because The Restoration at Grayson Manor perfectly encapsulates the pulpy, melodramatic essence of two soap divas having a slap fight. The only difference is, one set of the slap-happy hands was constructed using advanced nanotechnology and scurries around on its own like Thing from The Addams Family. McQuaid splashes enough blood up the walls of the gorgeous manor house to stop the film descending too far into daytime TV territory, but it’s the relationship between the bitchy yet vulnerable Boyd and his conniving ice queen of a mother that makes The Restoration at Grayson Manor so engaging, even if Jacqueline’s evil plan is obvious from a mile away.
Body Blow, The Cramps: A Period Piece, and The Restoration at Grayson Manor all made their world premieres at Fantastic Fest 2025.
Corpus
Corrin Evans premiered her debut feature film Corpus at Fantasia Film Festival.
Corpus is a steamy thriller set in 1997 New York, which follows a group of friends who travel to a remote mansion for a party, though what they find is not quite what they expected.
Intimacy and consent are at the heart of this film. The characters often long for and lust after each other, and Evans makes sure that the audience feels every breath and every touch. The film looks exquisite, thanks in part to cinematographer Charlie Cole. Together they designed a lighting setup using either natural lighting or very hot tungsten lights (which added to the steamy aesthetic). “I just love the body,” explained Evans at the world premiere in Montreal. “I knew I wanted it to feel very visceral and flowing from the gut, like you’re really with these characters up close. I wanted to be able to feel skin and pores.”
Having worked as an intimacy coordinator for several years, Evans brought her industry experience to both the story and her directing choices. Co-writer and actor Lily Cowles (who plays Billie in the film) praised Evans for her directing style. “I’ve often thought the reason that you’re a good director is the same reason you’re a good intimacy coordinator.” Cowles continued, adding that “when you’re on set, there’s a level of safety and an openness, and you can really trust that Corrin’s going to keep you in that pocket.”
So much of Corpus was crafted by the hands of the cast and the crew. Many of the effects were done practically (including one devastating moment that we will not spoil here), and the main location – an old mansion – was dressed and designed to feel authentically lived in. Even the score, composed by VAAAL (pronounced like wall with a v), was created using an organic process. “ I’ve been wanting to work with him forever,” explained Evans about their collaboration. “He’s an insane musician.”
Corpus will leave your skin crawling in all the best possible ways.
Castration Movie Chapter iii.ii Junior Ghosts—Premorphic Drift; a fragmentary passage
Louise Weard showcased an excerpt from the third part of her anthology epic Castration Movie at Fantasia Film Festival last month.
Weard’s epic anthology film is all about exploring “trans-temporality”, as she explained to the Fantasia crowd. “Your timeline gets so skewed in an interesting way, where transition becomes this benchmark.” Her original intent was to release one long 24h film as a way to reclaim that lost time, so to speak. She uses her family’s digital camcorder to shoot everything and uses tapes of her as a child to record and re-record her footage. She writes, directs, shoots, and edits everything, often exploring very dark topics.
While this may sound intimidating on paper, Weard writes with a vicious sense of humor, and has an excellent sense of how to balance sincerity with cringe. This particular section focuses its story on a romantic couple as one partner transitions. Weard’s excerpt produced maybe the most visceral reactions of the festival, with audience members actively heckling one of the onscreen characters during the film’s final act. While previous chapters have featured both graphic and sexually explicit content, this part focused instead on a kind of deep emotional trauma that is usually left to the most toxic of internet forums.
“This movie is my parody of Lawrence Anyways,” quipped Weard (who is trans herself) as the audience was still reeling from the film. She went on to explain how often trans stories are told from the perspective of the cis gaze, that the narrative arc focuses on how a cis person feels about another person’s transness. Weard’s camera work often zooms into the cis partner’s eyes as they watch their trans partner go about their day. “We’re going to really put that gaze under the microscope, almost literally in terms of how zoomed in we are on those eyes. And I think it creates a horror atmosphere in a lot of ways.”
The full scope of Castration Movie is yet to be revealed. Castration Movie Anthology i: Traps has a daunting runtime of 4h 35m, while Castration Movie Anthology ii: The Best of Both Worlds runs 5h. The excerpt presented at Montreal’s International Fantasia Festival ran 2h 10m, though Weard plans to release the full Castration Movie Anthology iii: Year of the Hyaena later this year, and is already working on an Anthology IV and V. “I like to think of it at this point like show running. Because it’s been literally nonstop production for coming up on four years. I’ve been shooting every weekend for four years.”
Weard was working as a PA when she started shooting her film, but “unfortunately, I kept running out of money,” she laughed, and of course the 2023 writer’s strike did not help her situation. She decided to release segments of her film to raise funds so she could keep shooting. With this specific 2h segment, Weard hopes to bring more audiences into her universe. “This gets to be the easy access point where someone can demo the castration movie experience for just two hours and decide if they want to commit to the whole 24-hour endeavor,” she chuckled.
After the immense success of their sophomore film I Saw The TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun returns to the big screen this month with their highly anticipated third film, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. The film is a true celebration of queerness, self-exploration, and the joys of breaking free.
Hannah Einbinder stars as Kris, an awkward, queer indie filmmaker tasked with reviving the ‘problematic’ slasher franchise Camp Miasma. In order to chip away at her writer’s block, she travels to the snow covered camp that inspired the franchise to meet Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), the reclusive star of the initial film. Jack Haven, who captivated audiences as Maddy in I Saw The TV Glow, plays the mesmerizing, mischievous slasher villain Little Death, a figure who haunts both Kris and Billy as they uncover the mysteries of the camp.
“I remember being like, ‘It is very important in the very first scene of the movie that there’d be a huge fucking geyser of blood,’” Schoenbrun told Deadline at Cannes this year. Schoenbrun felt it was important that Camp Miasma differentiate itself from the painful sadness of I Saw The TV Glow. “With this, I want people to feel like we’re hanging out. We’re sharing a joint on the porch and eating candy and talking about real things.”
Photo Credit: Charles-Antoine Marcotte
Fantasia Film Festival Highlights the Power of Queer Community Filmmaking
The ‘hang-out-vibe’ was just as important behind the scenes as it was on screen. Following the film’s Canadian premiere at Montreal’s International Fantasia Film Festival, Schoenbrun spoke at a panel alongside Einbinder, Avalon Fast, Louise Weard, and Alice Maio Mackay (Fast and Weard both appear in Camp Miasma, Weard and Mackay both had films screening at the festival). The group talked about friendship and the importance of community filmmaking. Fast confirmed that they’d been filming footage for a behind the scenes documentary about the making of Camp Miasma, and everyone expressed delight at being able to make art alongside each other.
“One of the biggest obstacles we have is that trans people don’t get hired on set very often, which thankfully all of us have corrected within our production capacities, on our sets specifically,” said Weard when talking about her own project, Castration Movie. When the question came up of making radical queer art under a capitalist umbrella, Weard continued, laughing that “any success we get, beyond our community that we’re making [our art] for, is just siphoning money from the bourgeois class, and then giving it out to other trans people, trans artists, people who need their rent paid, whatever.”
Jane Schoenbrun on Making Trans Art Without Creative Expectations
The conversation also delved into the intrinsic pressure of ‘needing’ to make art about trans/queerness as a trans/queer artist. “You’re making trans films if you’re trans” said Schoenbrun, while explaining there was no specific need to make all of one’s art about one’s own transness. “Cis dudes, they’re not like ‘how do I make a movie about being a cis dude?’ They’re just like ‘it’s the ~ ~ mafia ~ ~ ‘,” they laughed.
“Such a big part of how I taught myself to make movies was just being like, oh yeah, I know this grocery store.” With Camp Miasma, Schoenbrun continues to rely on the familiar, in the best possible way. “It’s X-Files and Twin Peaks, you know? Those are my primary reference points.” Camp Miasma is indeed loaded with references to many beloved franchises, including Sleepaway Camp, Friday the 13th, and Videodrome, though knowing those intellectual properties is far from necessary (everything is spelled out in the title). Nor is the film an ironic nod or a parody of those properties. “We were really thinking about how it felt like as a kid to watch those things [scary movies],” Schoenbrun explained at the Cannes premiere.
How Camp Miasma Blends Slasher Horror With Surreal Visual Storytelling
Every penny of the relatively small budget was clearly put to use making this film. There is a gorgeous opening sequence filled with artifacts that explain the lore behind the fictional Miasma franchise, and there is an impressive killing spree that was shot in one take and set to “A Long December” by Counting Crows. “It’s still probably the hardest thing I’ve had to do as an actor, just in terms of physical intensity,” Haven told Deadline back in May. Schoenbrun and cinematographer Eric Yue nailed the slasher aesthetic, often using dramatic shadows and buckets of blood, but they also create truly beautiful, surrealist landscapes that heighten the emotional drama swirling around the two main characters.
Why Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma Is One of Jane Schoenbrun’s Best Films
With Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Jane Schoenbrun cements their reputation as both a must see filmmaker and a sharp writer. Their work consistently nails the feelings and complexities of relationships rooted in our very online world, starting with their debut feature We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (which premiered at a virtual Sundance due to the COVID-19 pandemic). There’s a stickiness that’s unique to Schoenbrun’s writing. Certain phrases ring so right, they feel like they could open a portal to a new universe. They often do!
Camp Miasma blurs the lines between nightmare and fantasy, and taps into a feeling horror fans know all too well. “It’s such a joyful thing” expressed Schoenbrun at the Fantasia panel, about making films with their peers. “You make these things to share with people.” There is a carnal thrill to feeling scared from the comfort of one’s own home, and Schoenbrun feeds that feeling to their characters. As Gillian Anderson’s Billy whispers with a knowing smile, life is all about two things; flesh and fluids.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma opens in theaters on August 7th
