Image+Nation gets the party started with a stellar lineup of LGBT cinema

Ready the confetti and aim the champagne! Canada’s longest running LGBT film fest is about to turn 27 (though honey, you don’t look a minute over 19). With enough gold star features, docs, and shorts to choke a horse (or someone hung like one), Image+Nation will surely have you coming in the aisles. To grab seats. Because you won’t want to miss a second. Of each and every film.
 
Right.
 
This year, Image+Nation presents New Latin Voices, a festival focus dedicated to LGBT cinema from across Latin America. With this in mind, be sure to check out the festival’s Brazilian opener, The Way He Looks – an award-winning, sun-kissed, Belle and Sebastian-soundtracked look at young love. Still craving a bit of heat? Linger down south with another beautifully shot entry, Mexico’s Everybody’s Got Somebody…But Me. Though a little heavy-handed on the musical side of things (we get it – every single lyric to every single pop song says something wholly meaningful to each and every scene – sí, bueno…suspiro…), the gorgeous cinematography alone will grab you by the cojones (or the ovarios) and won’t let go for 95 minutes.

 
Speaking of cojones, give it your all and take in two testicle-tastic docs, Mondo Homo: A Study of French Gay Porn In The 70s (with a title like that, you’d think the film would be dry – you’d be wrong), and Age of Consent. Age goes deep and sheds light on London’s longest standing leather and fetish club, The Hoist (well, hello daddy!). Conversely, a must-see doc that tends to shy away from things long and schlong (though to be honest, not entirely) is HBO’s Regarding Susan Sontag. Regarding is a captivating meditation on the life and loves of a stunningly brilliant intellectual whose flame was doused much too early.

 
Other “need it, want it, gotta see it” purchase-your-ticket-early films on the roster include Sweden’s Something Must Break (gender ain’t no thang but a chicken wang), Germany’s Of Girls and Horses (the title speaks volumes), Israel’s Snails in the Rain (swimmers’ bodies and everything naughty), and of course, Switzerland’s Best Foreign Language submission for the 87th Academy Awards, The Circle. Enjoy them all, and support a very worthy (and well-curated) local film festival.