More than ever: HKLGFF ’26
how is it we’re moving backwards? Oh… wait. Thankfully HKLGFF37 is here to remedy some of the nonsense.
The 37th Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival | 第37屆香港同志影展 (HKLGFF) begins in just over a month, and just in time too. Colour us confused but it seems everywhere you look, LGBTQ+ communities are being vilified and persecuted in ways that rival the HIV/AIDS-powered hysteria of the ’80s. As HKLGFF executive director and filmmaker Ray Yeung stated, misinformation and hostility are rampant in the cesspool the Internet and social media have become, with weaponised consumerism – “Boycott X because they won’t sack their LGBTQ staff!” – adding fuel to the fire. So when someone says, “Why isn’t there a hetero pride month?”, after they pick themselves off the floor where you put them for being so stupid, take them to one of the films on HKLGFF’s 2026 roster.
It’s been a dicey stretch in Hong Kong, with Pink Dot once again finding itself homeless, after the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority denied it a venue in 2025, and then Stanley Plaza and Murray House (managed by Link REIT) canned it this year, saying “due to licensing issues, the venue cannot be rented to Pink Dot HK for public activities.” But thankfully HKLGFF still has its supporters, among them – and believe me, offering corporations any kind of credit hurts – Manulife, Red Ribbon Centre, the Eaton Hotel, the Mondrian, Air Canada, Lush Cosmetics and the consulates of Australia, France, Philippines, Spain, Netherlands, Ireland, Canada and the Goethe Institute. Not everybody is abandoning the LGBTQ+ community.
As usual, the festival is also celebrating the (sometimes) non-film work of a prominent mover and shaker of the non-billionaire kind with its Prism Award. This year’s recipient is Dr Gigi Chao, an advocate for social change and co-founder of Hong Kong Marriage Equality among other youth-focused education and support organisations. Chao may have her work cut out for her, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of joy on the schedule this year, almost defiantly so. The festival created a giant mood board this year, breaking down the programme into sections that might make it easy to find your jam. (Personally? Get out of here with the romance.) The six sections are: Laugh, which really says it all; Love, be it romantic or familial; coming out stories in Pride; Reflect is where you’ll find arthouse and experimental work; queer classics are in Remember; and Thrill is where the films designed to get you hot under the collar for whatever reason are found.
Kicking off the 37th edition are Adam Shankman’s Stop! That! Train! (above, left) and He Xiaodan’s Montréal, My Beautiful (Montréal, ma belle, right). RuPaul leads a cast of drag performers as the president we all wish the US actually had in a wilfully campy Airplane!-style comedy that owns its silliness while quite seriously celebrating drag culture. At the other end of the spectrum, He blends immigrant experience with coming-out in Montréal, a drama about middle-aged discovery, culture clash and intimacy, anchored by a standout performance by Joan Chen in a career loaded with them.
In between opening and closing night is one of the festival’s strongest line-ups in several years, starting with a pair of retrospectives of queer filmmaking trailblazers: Monika Treut and Rosa von Praunheim. The screenings include von Praunheim’s 1971 landmark It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives, widely considered West Germany’s Stonewall moment. And in a format that suddenly seems to be gaining traction, there are also 38 short films from across all genres in seven programmes that bring global LGBTQ+ life into focus – including two dedicated to Hong Kong filmmakers: Her Stories: New Hong Kong Shorts and Love in Pink: Emerging Hong Kong Shorts.
It’s thanks to filmmakers like Treut and von Praunheim that we have Yakui Zhan’s Under the Gaze of Night (Hong Kong, top), making its world premiere. The film is a “sensual, haunting, and suspenseful” exploration of the microcosm of life in a municipal park during COVID lockdown, a haven for the gay community and a place for connection during a time when it was more marginalised than usual. Conversion therapy is, shockingly, not illegal in most parts of the world, and it’s the foundation for Sundance breakout horror film Leviticus (Adrian Chiarella, Australia, above left). The film has been reductively called a “conversion therapy It Follows,” but it’s a creepy and moving blend of romance, supernatural horror, coming-of-age drama and rage.
At the risk of leaving deserving entries in the cold, some notable films showing this year include: Test (Sam McConnell, USA), a sports drama that interrogates masculinity and sexuality in the bodybuilding space; No Rest for the Wicked (Kasper Kalle, Denmark, above right) lifts a page from Robert Eggers-style folk horror for a fresh spin on queer vampire storytelling set in 19th centurey Faroe Islands; Open Endings (Nigel Santos, Philippines) follows four Filipinas who are also exes as they navigate post-romance friendship; Michiel van Erp draws a portrait of gay life in the shadow of two panedemics, HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and COVID in the 2020s in Downtown (Netherlands); Body Blow (Dean Francis, Australia, below left) is a bananas thriller about a closeted cop spiralling out of control while working Sydney’s gay club scene in a caper reminiscent of the Wachowski’s Bound; and in Flesh and Fuel (Pierre Le Gall, France/Poland, below right) the loneliness of long distance trucking ends with two working class dudes in the unlikeliest, and sweetest, of romances.
The 37th programme closes with a pair of films that couldn’t be more distinct from each other if they tried: Anshul Chauhan’s Tiger (below, left) and Avid Liongoren’s ZsaZsa Zaturnnah vs the Amazonistas of Planet X (right). Tiger tells the story of an aspiring porn star, Taiga (Takashi Kawaguchi in a nuanced, empathetic turn), that’s considering settling down and starting a family. Not so easy in Japan for a gay man, and not so easy if his performatively tolerant sister and homophobic father have any say. On a more upbeat note, Carlo Vergara’s watershed Filipino komiks ZsaZsa Zaturnnah – an homage to Mars Ravelo and Nestor Redondo’s Darna – gets the animated feature treatment that makes for a colourful, campy, joyful bookend to Stop! That! Train! Liongoren follows Joel Lamangan’s 2006 live action ZsaZsa Zaturnnah Ze Moveeh with a high-energy, cheeky, really gay superhero adventure that hit this past summer’s Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal like a glitter bomb, and it’s the perfect antidote for the shitshow the world is right now. For a complete list of film details hit the festival’s website at www.hklgff.hk.
37th Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
Where: Broadway Cinematheque; Palace ifc; PREMIERE Elements
Hours: September 4 to 20, Various times
Closed: N/A
Details: The Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, www.hklgff.hk