What’s on at Queer Wave this week

The 7th Queer Wave is back with events, screenings, workshops, parallel events and tributes to queer ancestors. Until September 27, diverse events will take place at NiMAC, giving a voice and platform to the LGBTQIA+ community. On tonight, September 23 is the Shorts V: The New Era film collection at 7pm which celebrates the joys, honours the resistance and imagines the futures for trans folk to come. At 9.30pm, there will be a screening of Carmen Emmi’s debut feature and Sundance-winner Plainclothes, a film that takes considerable risks in form and aesthetic to deliver an impactful psychological thriller about a closeted cop arresting men at a gay cruising spot, set in the 90s. Women-centred stories that navigate connection and longing will be screened in the Shorts VI: Lady Friends category on September 24 at 7pm. Then, at 9.30pm, Elliott Tuttle’s highly contested Blue Film will have its Cypriot premiere, and is sure to spark important yet difficult debates among members of the audience. On September 25, a series of short films on Family Ties will take over the big screen at 7.30pm, while later, the sapphic, feel-good Venice-winner Bearcave, directed by Stergios Dinopoulos and Krysianna Papadakis, will be screened. This is a keenly awaited appearance in Cyprus after recently being cancelled due to homophobic backlash in the Greek village of Paraskevi, Aigialeia. The night continues with the 20-minute waacking piece Tea Party and DJ sets until the early hours, with Queer Wave welcoming newcomer Electrika and veteran NANA to the festival and on the decks. September 26 is a packed day. Events begin at 3pm with The Book Club on Queer Horror, a critical thinking workshop where George Rallis will unpack the strong history of queer horror. At 5pm, the programme Shorts VIII: Unity in Community will look at themes such as ecology, sport and sex positivity in the context of creating a safe space and community, featuring a Q&A with Thanasis Tsimpinis on The Jezebels. Then at 7pm, Rati Tsideladze’s heart-wrenching A Song Without Home, winner of the Mermaid Award at this year’s Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, explores the complexity of freedom for a trans woman from Georgia as she parts with her mother to seek asylum in Austria. Towards the end of the night, Queer Wave invites everyone to join wearing their kinkiest outfits for this long-awaited festival presentation of Pillion by Harry Lighton, exploring master-slave dynamics in what lead actor Alexander Skarsgård has described as a dom-com. This year’s closing party titled Wh*reticu/ture will be an event to remember and the festival’s third collaboration with Trash Your Gender. The final day of Queer Wave, September 27, will begin with Trans Talks at 3pm, an event opening up a call for trans, non-binary and gender-expansive folks to get together for a roundtable discussion about what it’s actually like to navigate the world right now. The festival will then celebrate 100 years since Karin Swanström’s The Girl in Tails (1926), a silent comedy to be screened at 5pm that tackles conformity, feminism and gender roles, and is now regarded as a pioneering feminist and queer classic of the Swedish silent era. The Cyprus premiere of Lucio Castro’s Drunken Noodles at 7pm offers something soft, magical and fairytale-like. The festival concludes with a sing-along screening of the closing film: Jim Sharman’s cult queer classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), described as a must for first-timers and hardcore fans alike. Throughout the events at NiMAC, visitors will be able to catch also Paola and Karayan, two audiovisual installations paying tribute to queer ancestors Paola Revenioti and Andreas Karayian. Queer Wave 2026 7th festival edition with screenings, performances and special events. Until September 27. NiMAC, Nicosia. www.queerwave.com