LGBT+ film festival SQIFF returns to Glasgow
| Celebrating emerging and boundary-pushing LGBTQIA+ filmmakers and artists from Scotland and beyond, the Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF) returns for its 10th year, screening across Glasgow from 27th October – 1st November 2025. Continuing its legacy as Scotland’s biggest and longest-running queer film festival, SQIFF brings together the best of independent LGBTQ+ filmmaking from across the globe. With a line-up of 19 curated programmes screening over 90 short films, four feature films, world premieres, a special Halloween horror event, as well as a queer craft fair, the Best Scottish Short award competition, industry events and networking for filmmakers, panels, performances, and more. This year’s festival will take place across screens and venues in Glasgow’s Merchant City, including The Social Hub, GMAC, Listen Gallery, and The Boardwalk, with a late-night party at the iconic Art School. All SQIFF screenings and events continue to offer pay-what-you-can tickets, starting from free. SQIFF are also launching a fundraising campaign for year-round costs, inviting people to donate “a tenner for ten” to celebrate a decade of SQIFF. |
| Donate here |
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| The Serpent’s Skin, Alice Maio Mackay, 2025 ; Dreams In Nightmares, Shatara Michelle Ford, 2024 This year, SQIFF presents a Halloween spectacular and the Scottish premiere of The Serpent’s Skin, the sixth feature film by Australian wunderkind, the 20-year-old Alice Maio Mackay, which weaves a blood-soaked tale of trans identity, vengeance, and the supernatural. The film is preceded by surreal and seductive horror short ¡BESO DE LENGUA! by Jose Luiz Zorrero. The festival concludes with a closing event that will announce the winner of SQIFF’s Best Scottish Short Award, as well as screen American polymath Shatara Michelle Ford’s newest feature film Dreams In Nightmares, which tells a tender tale of queer femme friendship, open country roads in the American Midwest, and the strength of dreams in a world of nightmares. SQIFF is transported to the Art School where the night will continue, co-curated with new age queer club night, scandal.gla and MENA/SWANA-oriented club night WSHWSH. Expect genres from global majority diasporas, electric energy, and a space held by some of Glasgow’s most vital queer inclusive POC collectives. The curated short film programme brings poignant and prescient discussions to the foreground through moving image works from here in Scotland to across the globe. Highlights of the programme include the returning Scottish Shorts opening event, which focuses on Scotland’s own talented and close-knit queer filmmaking community. In the queer, colourful, experimental galaxy of For real?, expect alien-esque costumes, body scanners, crocodile chromosomes and lesbian telepathy. Aunties honours our elders, who demonstrate their care for younger generations, with a serving of chai made by local aunties after the screening. With the film industry so often focusing on queer pain, Queerly Beloved shifts the spotlight to laughter, love, and defiance, with a stand-up set by the sharp Kathleen Hughes, and a live performance by electrifying performer Craig Manson. Squad Goals brings together three stories of very different squads: trans footballers, Brazilian beach vendors and leather gays. The films celebrate chosen families with a vibrant sense of identity and culture, with local trans football team Gender Goals and Glasgow Leather Dykes giving a Q&A post-screening. SQIFF commits to confronting the brutal truth of Palestinian erasure in NO PRIDE IN GENOCIDE. Featuring urgent works from Palestine, the diaspora, and Lebanon, this programme gathers stories of queer love, loss, resistance, and survival. As Palestine is reduced to rubble and its people fight for survival, this programme stands in unwavering solidarity. It amplifies queer voices that refuse to be erased by genocide, pinkwashing, or complicity. This year sees guest curation from festivals including Oska Bright Film Festival, the world’s leading learning disability film festival, and Queer East, who showcase boundary-pushing LGBTQ+ filmmakers and artists from East and Southeast Asia and its diaspora communities. Curated in collaboration with Mostra Queer Brasil, A Nova Era offers a window into queer life and imagination across Brazil. The screening includes a surprise short, the winner of Best Brazilian Short Film from Mostra Luminosa in Bahia. Overlooking the Clyde throughout the festival run, Listen Gallery will host The River and The Glen, Camp Trans Scotland: The Exhibition, an exhibition and screening of The River and The Glen, a documentary on the first Scottish Camp Trans, which happened in September 2024, near Aberfeldy. Cradled by the mountains, far away from cis-society for a weekend, this exhibition charts how Camp Trans was a coming together of trans people to rest and restore strength. The queer craft fair features local artists selling a diverse spread of goodies, including unique artworks, handmade ceramics, flower arrangements, collectables, jewellery, and more. Artist stalls include: Greenbananas_420, PJ Harper, Croissant Cat Studio, Art of Birdie Studio, Nina Candido, Wild Hopes Studio, and more. |
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| Credit: Tiu Makkonen Indigo Korres, Director of SQIFF says: “We are so excited for SQIFF’s 10th edition. We can’t wait to share our ambitious programme with you, including everything from queer heartbreak to camp horror. SQIFF has a fantastic audience and we look forward to coming together again to celebrate queer film, art and community. Sarah-Jane Meredith, Senior Manager of National Lottery Audiences Projects at the BFI said: “This is the first time the Audience Projects Fund has supported SQIFF, making an award in recognition of its exemplary commitment to ensuring the festival is truly accessible. We hope the award will consolidate SQIFF’s place within the UK’s exhibition sector and raise its national profile.” Katharine Simpson from Screen Scotland says, “The team at SQIFF have done a wonderful job of creating a strong community around the festival. It’s a much-loved event, with a growing audience, demonstrated by the success of last year’s festival, which sold out the majority of its screenings. SQIFF has also served as an inspiration to many other film festivals on how to deliver accessibility and care for your audiences. Likewise, the exciting programme not only shines the light on international LGBT+ stories that might not otherwise make it to our cinema screens, but also provides a supportive platform for homegrown filmmaking talent.” Ilia Ryzhenko, Manager at Film Hub Scotland, says: “Every year, SQIFF offers accessible and boundary-pushing film events to audiences across Scotland – and this year is no different. We are proud to support the festival’s 10th anniversary programme: thanks to its focus on community, emerging Scottish filmmakers and partnerships – like those with Oska Bright Film Festival – it will ensure as many people as possible can experience the magic of queer cinema, right in the heart of Glasgow.” The Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF) is Scotland’s only active queer film festival and charity focused on uplifting emerging queer filmmakers, a BAFTA Qualifying festival now in its 10th year. It is supported by Screen Scotland, the BFI Audience Projects Fund and Film Hub Scotland (part of the BFI Film Audience Network), all awarding National Lottery funding. SQIFF aims to build community through queer films, with an ultimate goal to get audiences watching, talking about, and making more queer films, by creating inspiring and informative events across Scotland. Moreover, SQIFF supports marginalised groups within the LGBTQIA+ community by providing a networking system for queer filmmakers, as well as filmmaking workshops for audiences wanting to get a start in the medium. SQIFF aims to challenge inequalities and barriers to accessing the arts. |
| Full 2025 programme here |
