Lesbian 2025 Archives - Page 2 of 3

If You Are Afraid You Put Your Heart into Your Mouth and Smile

Winner of the Teddy Jury award in the 2025 Berlin Festival, “If you are afraid, you put your heart into your mouth and smile” describes a small and realistic moment in a current adolescent story in a beautiful and touching way. Anna (Siena Popovic) is a 12-year-old girl living with her deaf single mother Isolda (Mariya Menner) in Vienna.

When Anna begins her school year in a new school, she is ashamed of the way her world is different from her wealthy classmates. However, the more Anna’s relationships deepen, and her struggles become more complicated, she learns to use her voice.

The film describes, in touching gentleness, the relationship between Anna and her mother through a refreshing female queer lens. The film is housing a myriad of queer characters and actors including Daniel Sea (“The L Word”).

This is a very touching debut film by director Marie Luise Lehner on first innocent love.

In association with the Austrian Cultural Forum Tel Aviv

No Beast. So Fierce.

The Shakespearean tragedy “Richard III” in a queer, daring and contemporary adaptation. A monumental cinematic experience that meant for the big screen and will leave breathless throughout.

Two noble houses, the Arab families York and Lancaster, bring to the courthouse the war that was raging in the streets of Berlin for decades. The York youngest daughter, Rashida, is a lawyer who ends the long-time gang war in a bloody attack on the heads of the Lancaster family. Finally – some peace!

But as a woman, Rashida is only a pawn in the men’s world. As soon as the dust settles on the battlefield, she is destined to follow her traditional family norms and could never take the top spot in the pyramid. Rashida has no intention to bow to the men in her family- she intends to rule. To claim her place she must plot, seduce enemies and kill lovers. Rashida is played by rising actress Kenda Hmeidan and she gives the role a lesbian twist, and many more layers that do not appear in the original play with a touch of Mediterranean history of violence and war. Rashida’s scarred and wounded soul rises from the ashes and dust into a goddess of revenge. Hiam Abbass (“Succession”, “The Old Man” opposite Jeff Bridges, Eran Riklis’ films: “The Syrian Bride” and “Lemon Tree”) plays Rashida’s devoted right hand.

In association with the Embassy of Germany

Love Me Tender

Please be aware – the screening at 25/10/2025 is NOT in Tel-Aviv Cinematheque.

Actress Vicky Krieps seem to be everywhere these days- her big break was at Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread” alongside Daniel Day-Lewis, “The Survivor” with Ben Foster, the horror thriller “Time” by director M. Night Shayamalan and “Corsage” where she played Austrian Empress Sisi.

Now she enters the shoes of a woman who is fighting for custody over her son, in a performance that can only be described as tour de force. Krieps manages to move, make laugh, hurt and simply dominate the screen for 134 minutes.

At the end of one summer Clemence tells her ex-husband that she is having romantic relationships with women. Her life falls apart when he demands sole custody over their son, claiming she is unstable. Clemence is shocked to discover the French law is on her ex-husband’s side- now she must go through a line of social workers and fight to prove that she is a fit mother while still maintaining her identity as a free woman.

In her second feature film, director Anna Cazenave proves she is destined to be a brave and meaningful voice in current French cinema.

In association with the Embassy of France & Institut français de Tel Aviv

Blind Love

A love triangle goes out of control in Taiwanese director Julian Chou’s second film. Shu-Yin is a mother that quietly runs her family- a husband who’s a respectable surgeon and her rebellious teenage son who refuses to follow his father’s footsteps. An encounter with Shu-Jin, an amateur photographer and an ophthalmologist, will awaken memories, longing and desires she had been suppressing for a long time.

While Shu-Yin is dealing with her old desires, her son Han discovers completely new desires and passions. He accidentally meets Shu-Jin and falls for the charismatic woman who gives him new energy for life.

Director Julian Chou created a melodrama that delves into the fragile bonds that define family dynamics. She explores identity, longing and exposes the tension between the traditional family cell and the westernization of Taiwan.

“Blind love” navigates gently between queerness, gender and cultural expectations.

In association with the Embassy of The Taiwan

FUCK IT

Gal is a girl whose only desire is to be a man.

She feels like a man inside and expresses herself defiantly.

Her dissonance between mind and body is expressed throughout the film.

The film is told through the eyes of Gal, who films and documents everything in her life without any censorship.

Gal meets Shelly, a straight girl who initially does not respond to her advances. Slowly, the two become closer, and an intimate bond develops between them.

Gal tries to move up a level with Shelly and wants to express herself in bed as a man in a way she knows and feels safe in, and Shelly refuses to accept this way.

Gal has difficulty with Shelly’s lack of acceptance and reacts in an extreme way.

The End of a Woman – Sarit Ahmad Shakur

The tragic story of Sarit Ahmad Shakur, an 18-year-old LGBTQ+ woman from the Druze village of Kiser al-Sami, who was murdered on June 9, 2023. The episode follows Sarit’s difficult life, her struggle for love and understanding from her family, and the bitter path that led to her tragic death. This unique episode is narrated through recordings, testimonies, experts, and friends, revealing for the first time the indictment against the suspects in the murder and serving as an indictment against the traditional and conservative society that struggles to accept the sexual identity of young people in the Arab community.