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Hailed as the oldest gay-themed film festival in Europe, the Torino GLBT Film Festival launches today in Northern Italy and runs through April 25, with a slew of international gay flicks, parties, a performance by Italian singer Arisa and the premiere of a 3-D version of Swan Lake directed by Matthew Bourne.

Also showing at Tribeca this month, the American romantic drama Keep the Lights On, by filmmaker Ira Sachs (Married Life), is in competition for Best Feature—as are Eldar Rapaport’s August (above) about former lovers who unexpectedly reunite after several years, and the Israeli drama Melting Away, about a trans woman trying to repair her broken relationship with her homophobic, cancer-ridden father.

Katherine Fairfax Wright’s documentary Call Me Kuchu focuses on the violent homophobia running rampant in Uganda and spotlights David Kato, who—before his tragic death in 2011—fought against the infamous “Kill the Gays.” Kuchu won the Teddy Award for Best Documentary earlier this year at the Berlin Film Festival.

Torino is hosting the world premiere of Verde Verde, a controversial thriller and the first gay film produced in Cuba since 1993′s Strawberry & Chocolate. Revealing the fatal attraction between two men, director Enrique Pineda Barnet openly references Fassbinder’s Querelle and its “dreamlike, sensual, claustrophobic atmosphere.”

On a lighter note, Kathleen Turner (above) stars in The Perfect Family as a devoted wife and mother who, upon learning of her nomination for Catholic of the Year,  desperately starts hiding her family’s “flaws”—including her lesbian daughter’s pregnancy.. Directed by Anne Renton and co-tarring Jason Ritter, Emily Deschanel and out actor Richard Chamberlain, Family returns Turner to the comedic side she so deliciously mastered in John Water’s Serial Mom.

Photos: Wolf Video, Oana Marian/Courtesy Variance Films/The Perfect Family LLC