The BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival returns for its 40th edition with a packed programme of global queer cinema, new voices and fan favourites. Held at BFI Southbank from 18-29 March, the festival blends screenings with lively events: from a Heartstopper Forever! conversation with Alice Oseman to a screen talk featuring Russell T Davies. This edition foregrounds both cinematic risk-taking and tender storytelling, offering everything from debut features to hard-hitting documentaries and reimagined classics.
Across eleven days viewers can expect a wide range of tones and formats: intimate dramas, offbeat comedies, trans-led horror, historical biography and urgent political documentaries. The programme highlights queer life in many regions, including powerful work from Nigeria, South Africa, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. Below is a focused run-through of 13 films to prioritise while you plan your schedule at the festival.
Festival overview and headline screenings
For the opening night the organisers present Hunky Jesus, a documentary that traces the history and continuing activism of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The film looks back to the movement’s roots in 1979 and documents recent community work, including their visibility during health crises. Closing night is given to Black Burns Fast, the debut feature by Sandulela Asanda set in a prestigious South African boarding school; it follows 17-year-old Luthando (Esihle Ndleleni) whose private romance with the rebellious Ayanda (Muadi Ilung) destabilises family and school life. Another standout opener is Big Girls Don’t Cry, told through the summer-eyed perspective of Sid (Ani Palmer) as she discovers desire online and among older teens in early 2000s New Zealand, a debut from Paloma Schneideman, who was mentored by Jane Campion.
Fiction highlights: love, identity and theatrical lives
Romantic reunions and historical flamboyance
Several narrative features explore the consequences of love, public life and private identity. ìfé (The Sequel), from Pamela Adie, reunites Adaora (Gbubemi Ejeye) and ífé (Uzoamaka Aniunoh) years after a fiercely felt relationship, forcing them to decide whether to risk comfortable, separate lives for an old flame. Julian, Cato Kusters’ feature adaptation of Fleur Pierets’ memoir, charts the relationship of Fleur (Nina Meurisse) and Julian (Laurence Roothooft) as they confront marriage aspirations and the 22 Project; the film is executive produced by Lukas Dhont. In a very different register, Madfabulous portrays the extravagant life of Henry Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey, with Callum Scott Howells energising a portrait of scandalous fashion, inherited fortune and social defiance in late 19th-century Britain.
Offbeat dramas and small-town reinventions
The programme also includes quirky and intimate stories such as Lunar Sway, Nick Butler’s offbeat comedy in which Cliff meets a woman claiming to be his mother (Liza Weil) and is pulled into a dubious con-artist world, and Satisfaction, a psychological drama shot against the whitewashed architecture of the Greek isles. Satisfaction stars Emma Laird and Fionn Whitehead as two composers whose early spark frays over time; a chance connection with Elena (Zar Amir Embrahimi) on a nudist beach prompts a reckoning about desire, art and betrayal.
Genre, activism and urgent documentary
BFI Flare’s programme gives space to genre experimentation and urgent social stories. The Serpent’s Skin, Alice Maio Mackay’s trans-led queer horror, follows trans teen Anna (Alexandra McVicker) into a goth subculture and a supernatural spiral after a demon is inadvertently released. On the documentary front, To Dance is to Resist (Julian Lautenbacher) follows two Ukrainian dancers, Jay and Vol’demar, navigating artistry and queer life amid Russia’s invasion, blending intimate portraiture with political urgency. Out Laws traces Friedel Dausab’s legal battle against the Namibian state — beginning with his suit filed in June 2026 — and situates his case within historic laws that continue to harm LGBTQ+ people in parts of the Global South.
The festival also presents We Are Pat, director Rowan Haber’s reframing of Julia Sweeney’s Saturday Night Live character through trans comedians who reconstruct and reclaim the ambiguous figure, and What Will I Become?, a reflective but hopeful film by Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos that interweaves personal testimony and broader community reflection while tracing the lives of Kyler Prescott and Blake Brockington, two trans boys who died by suicide and who are presented as “two high-profile examples of approximately 50% of trans boys in the USA who did not survive a suicide attempt.” Collectively, these titles highlight how queer cinema can be both revelatory and restorative, pairing joy with activism across styles and formats.