2024 BFI Flare London LGBTQ Festival Line Up Has ‘Hearts, Bodies And Minds’

The 38th edition of BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, one of the world’s most significant and long-standing queer film events has revealed it’s 2024 programme.

All taking place at London’s BFI Southbank.  With 33 World Premieres with 57 features and 81 shorts from 41 countries. With a  focus on Hearts, Bodies and Minds the festival’s main strands.

BFI Flare previously announced it will open with the European Premiere of Amrou Al-Kadhi’s debut feature Layla which recently had its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. The Festival’s closing night film is the World Premiere of docu-fiction Lady Like by director/producer Luke Willis.

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Other highlights from the festival include the world premiere of Karen Knox‘s We Forgot To Break Up. A pitch perfect romantic drama featuring a trans musician caught in a love triangle with his bandmates as they rise to fame in this love letter to Toronto’s 2000s music scene. European premiere of moving drama Close To You starring Dominic Savage and Elliot Page. Rose Glass‘ Love Lies Bleeding starring Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian the gripping and gory follow-up to Saint Maud finds a lesbian couple drawn into a web of violence in 1980s small-town New Mexico.

Coming of age stories are big part of this year’s festival like  Benjamin Howard’s powerful coming-of-age drama Riley. All about Dakota Riley who is a star-player on a football team whose secret gay life threatens to destroy him. A defiant trio of New Zeland schoolgirls battle against their strict matron in Josephine Stewart Te-Whiu‘s satirical comedy We Were Dangerous.

There will be a selection of films from around the globe including slow burn romance Who’ll Stop The Rain. Following an art student who experiences first love after ing a protest group in post-martial-law Taiwan by I-Hsuan Su. A mother’s misguided instincts lead to crime in Toll, a remarkable and impressively shot family drama with a sharp satirical edge by Carolina Markowicz.

Other highlights include Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd’s Unicorns. A romance spread over two distinct communities starring Ben Hardy and Jason Patel. Loosely inspired by the real-life experiences of Asifa Lahore, Britain’s first out Muslim drag queen. Apollo Bakopoulos‘ Aligned, an engaging drama, follows the story of two male dancers who forge an artistic and sexual bond while training with a dance company in Greece.

The 38th edition of BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival will take place between 13th until 24th March. Tickets go on sale on 20th February for BFI and on general sale from 22nd February via bfi.org.uk/flare.