Queer East Festival announces full 2025 programme, the most expansive edition in its history.
Showcasing boundary-pushing LGBTQ+ filmmakers and artists from East and Southeast Asia and its diaspora communities, Queer East Festival returns with an eclectic and expansive film, arts, literature, and performance programme across London from 23 April to 18 May 2025. With screenings across London’s iconic cinemas and venues, including the BFI Southbank, ICA London, and Rio Cinema, alongside arts and community spaces such as The Place, The Barbican, and QUEERCIRCLE.
Activism, community, and the collective memory of queer history take centre stage in this year’s programme. Highlights of the extensive film programme include:-
- Kubi (Japan, 2023) - Opening Gala UK Premiere, legendary director Takeshi Kitano (Battle Royale, Zatoichi) offers a darkly comic perspective on the political intrigue and homoerotic desire, this strikingly violent film comprehensively debunks the myths of masculinity, ethics and honour that have defined the samurai genre onscreen.
- Edhi Alice (Korea, 2024) - Closing Gala UK Premiere, an intimate and affecting documentary from award-winning South Korean filmmaker and queer activist Ilrhan Kim interrogating how documentaries about trans communities are made: the creative decisions, relationships, and ethical questions involved
- Extremely Unique Dynamic (USA, 2024) - UK Premiere, Ryan and Daniel, two childhood best friends and aspiring actors, spend one final weekend together before Ryan moves to Canada with his fiancé. Wanting to create one lasting memory, they decide to make a movie… about two guys making a movie. A coming out story and meta-comedy starring Harrison Xu and Ivan Leung
- Come Dance With Me (China, 2022) - UK Premiere, Before it closed in 2018, Lai Lai Ballroom became famous amongst Shanghai’s gay community, and was popular with middle-aged and elderly gay men. This documentary tenderly examines this space of sanctuary, and the sense of community it created for the lonely souls who used to frequent it
- We Are Here (China, 2015) with its directors both being pioneering LGBT activists, this activist documentary revisits the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, which was hosted in Beijing and attended by 300 lesbian women from around the world; the gathering helped spearhead the birth of the queer lala movement in China
Queer East continues its flourishing city-wide arts programme, including cross-disciplinary group exhibition { guttural },,,{ fleshless } at Greenwich LGBTQ+ arts champions QUEERCIRCLE, open to the public 26 April - 17 May. For its debut live theatre presentation, the festival is hosting the international premiere of When the cloud catches colours, at The Pit, Barbican (24 – 26 April), led by Singaporean theatre maker Chng Yi Ka. It's dance programme returns to The Place, with aWokening by Hong Kong-Canadian artist Winnie Ho (Fri 16 May), which blends physical performance, immersive scenography, and sensory dramaturgy. And for the first time, Queer East Festival introduces a literature programme, with talks from author Xuanlin Tham on their recent book Revolutionary Desires, and Chi Ta-Wei on his 1995 queer sci-fi novel The Membranes and Queering Objects II, a poetry workshop hosted by National Poetry Competition winner Eric Yip.
Queer East Festival 2025: 23 April to 18 May 2025
Further Information: Home - Queer East