Features

42nd Annual Miami Film Festival LGBTQ Lineup

March 27, 2025

Miami Dade College’s Miami Film Festival announced its acclaimed lineup for its upcoming Festival taking place from April 3-13. The Festival will open with Meet the Barbarians, with director Julie Delpy in attendance on Thursday, April 3, when she will receive the Festival’s Impact Award. The Festival will close with On Swift Horses, directed by Daniel Minahan, on Saturday, April 12. Here is a list of the LGBTQ films at the festival.

On Swift Horses – Closing Night Film

Muriel and her husband Lee are beginning a bright new life in California when he returns from the Korean War. But their newfound stability is upended by the arrival of Lee’s charismatic brother, Julius, a wayward gambler with a secret past. A dangerous love triangle quickly forms. When Julius takes off in search of the young card cheat he’s fallen for, Muriel’s longing for something more propels her into a secret life of her own, gambling on racehorses and exploring a love she never dreamed possible.Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi, Will Poulter, and Diego Calva star in this Toronto Film Festival breakout about the American West and queer love.

Closing Night Film & Party – Saturday April 12, 7pm, Olympia Theater, and Jungle Plaza.

Arenas – Saturday April 5, 3pm, Silverspot Cinema, Room 13

At just 18 years old, Brahim, a promising young footballer, is preparing to realize his dream: signing his first professional contract in Lyon, his club, his city. But when a mysterious and powerful agent Francis (Édgar Ramírez) disrupts the negotiations, Brahim embarks on a race against time on the transfer market, where anything goes. From first-time feature filmmaker Camille Perton, Arenas is an exhilarating exploration into the shady side of the football business. Anchored by a masterful performance from Édgar Ramírez, this is not your typical sports drama. A football thriller with a moral quandary twist at its center, we find ourselves fully immersed in the push and pull between loyalty and money, and the tough choices we make to claim our ultimate destiny.

Cherri – Saturday April 5, 5:15pm, Koubek Theater & Saturday April 12, 5:30pm, Silverspot Cinema, Room 13

Cherri is gay, obese and loves dancing. He lives with his husband Luis, an elderly man who can no longer fend for himself. Cherri baths him, cares for him and feeds him; but they no longer function as a couple. In the last few months, love has again knocked on his door. That’s what Cherri thinks, who is delighted with Tim, who works in a factory. It’s really a commercial relationship, where one allows the other to touch him while the other calms his thirst for love. Until the day that Cherri is beaten by Tim and that chapter is closed, he will be ready to start a new life.

Chlorophyll (Clorofilla) – Tuesday April 8, 9pm, Coral Gables Art Cinema

Green-haired Maia is tired of city life and, driven by a desire to be among nature, she decides to spend the summer picking oranges. In the orchards she is greeted by the gardener, an eccentric loner called Teo, who notices that Maia isn’t like everyone else. In the same way he tends his plants, he devotes his time and energy to her, too, and the young woman starts to blossom. Their burgeoning friendship, however, is unsettled by the arrival of Teo’s father and older brother Arturo, who are planning a celebration in a neighbouring village… In her richly coloured story, director Ivana Gloria shows it’s sometimes difficult to find someone who could help us to discover our true selves.

Duino – Tuesday, April 8, 9:15pm, Silverspot Cinema, Room 13, and Wednesday, April 9, 6:45pm, O Cinema

Executive produced by the late Norman Lear, this debut feature by Juan Pablo Di Pace and Andres Pepe Estrada follows filmmaker Matias as he struggles to finish editing a movie that was inspired by his elusive first love – a Swedish boy named Alexander – whom he met at a boarding school in 1997. Tenderness and fascination define their strong friendship, which is short-lived when Alexander is suddenly expelled, leaving young Matias with a story of undeclared emotions…even 25 years later.

Matias, played by co-director Di Pace (The Mattachine Family, Mama Mia, TV’s Fuller House), decides to reopen Pandora’s box by coming face-to-face with Alexander, discovering life imitating art and confronting the sneaky power of memory.

Pink Narcissus – Thursday, April 10, 8:45pm, O Cinema

An extremely handsome, brooding, self-absorbed young man escapes the realities of his real world through a progression of fantasies. Obsessed with his own perfection, he lives in a dreamworld of intense colors, magnificent music, elaborate costumes and strikingly handsome men. In a series of sequences he imagines himself as a Roman slave chosen by the emperor, a triumphant matador vanquishing the bull (who is really a black leather clad cyclist), an innocent wood nymph gamboling in the woods, and a diaphanously dressed harem boy in the tent of the sheik. His narcissistic enchantment with his own beauty and lifestyle is marred by one great fear – aging and the loss of his youth and good looks.

Queens of Drama – Wednesday, April 9, 9pm, O Cinema

It’s 2055 and Steevyshady, an obsessive Mimi Madamour stan, tells us of their idol’s mad destiny from the very peak of her career in 2005, all the way down to the pits of hell, a downfall brought about by her love story with punk icon Billie Kohler. Over the course of half a century we follow these drama queens as they top the charts and set sail on the course of mad queer love.

Rent Free – Thursday April 10, 6:30pinm, O Cinema

Best friends since childhood, Ben and Jordan are two young men living in a rapidly changing Austin, where they navigate low-paying jobs, fraught relationships, and their own emotionally codependent friendship. When they suddenly lose their apartment, they come up with a last-ditch plan to spend the rest of the year “rent free”. They set out on a tragicomic journey across the couches, floors and guest rooms of their friends while desperately trying to save up enough money to leave behind a city they no longer recognize. Made with a satirical bent and an ensemble cast, Rent Free is a high-anxiety comedy about a generation on the edge.

LGBTQ SHORT FILMS include: Ask A Punk, Capitanes, Don’t Cry For Me All You Drag Queens, Gender Reveal, Gen Z Queerz , Invincible Summer, My Best Friend, Stud Country, Teen Mary, ¡Que Colombianada! (Cinemaslam)