Scottish Queer International Film Festival returns for 2025

Film festivals grow up so fast. It seems like only yesterday that Scottish Queer International Film Festival were the cool new kids on the block. Now that they’re celebrating their tenth edition this year, they’re part of the furniture on the Scottish film festival scene – but they’re still pretty cool. The festival returns to Glasgow next month (27 Oct-1 Nov) with another boundary-pushing programme of LGBTQIA+ films.

“We are so excited for SQIFF’s tenth edition,” says SQIFF’s director, Indigo Kores. “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.”

At the heart of this year’s festival are nineteen curated shorts programmes featuring over 90 films in total. Proceedings kick off on 27 October with Opening Night Scottish Shorts, a lively programme of work from emerging queer filmmakers who are part of Scotland’s tight-knit film community. Expect tales featuring an agoraphobic doomsday pepper, experimental puppetry and a Grindr hookup with a demon. Other shorts programmes to look out for include How We Loved, How We Broke, with films all about love and heartbreak; Squad Goals, featuring films celebrating chosen families; and Queerly Beloved, a programme of warm and witty comedies. Also sure to be powerful will be NO PRIDE IN GENOCIDE, which looks at the queer voices that are being bombed, silenced, and erased by the ongoing horrors in Gaza. “As Palestine is reduced to rubble and its people fight for survival, this programme stands in unwavering solidarity,” reads SQIFF's programme.

There's a quartet of features in the programme too. To mark Halloween, SQIFF screens The Serpent’s Skin from prolific Australian filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay – this is her sixth film and she’s only 20 (eat your heart out, Xavier Dolan). It concerns the romance between two young women who discover they have supernatural powers and unwittingly unleash a demon; we’re told the vibe suggests a really good episode of Charmed or Buffy, which sounds good to us.

The closing film is Dreams in Nightmares, a road movie in which three queer black femmes embark on a trip across the Midwest of the United States in search of their missing friend, which will be followed by a party at The Art School with scandal.gla and WSHWSH. The other features are a brace of films curated by Queer East: Filipino coming-of-age romance Rookie and Chinese documentary We Are Here.

There’s also live performance. The aforementioned Queerly Beloved programme opens with standup from comedican Kathleen Hughes, and closes with a performance from Craig Manson. You'll also find poetry from Esraa Husain and music from Glasgow-based multidisciplinary artists Simone Seales and Mele Broomes elsewhere in the programme. Over at the Listen Gallery, there’s the exhibition The River and The Glen, Camp Trans Scotland which includes a screening of an eponymous documentary on the first Scottish Camp Trans, which happened in September 2024, near Aberfeldy. Add to this bumper lineup a queer craft fair, an awards competition for Best Scottish Short, industry events and lots of networking.

This year’s SQIFF takes place mostly in and around the Merchant City area of town, with events taking place at The Social Hub, GMAC, the Listen Gallery, and The Boardwalk. As ever, accessibility is key at SQIFF, and screenings and events are available at pay-what-you-can ticket prices, which start at £0.

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Scottish Queer International Film Festival takes place at venues across Glasgow, 27 Oct - 1 Nov, full programme details and tickets at sqiff.org