Heat Up Your Fall With Europe’s Top Flaming Film Festivals

With summer winding down and Pride season officially over, so ends your chances of experiencing a major gay event in Europe this year, right? Oh, so wrong.

Fall is Europe’s LGBT film festival season, and a whole passel of queer cinema extravaganzas are now coming down the pike. Here’s a look at the best of the bunch for September and October (next week we’ll look at November and December).

Image via Queer Lisboa

Click through for Europe’s best LGBT film festivals for early Fall 2012.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziMcVsEDUO4

Queer Lisboa
September 21-29
Lisbon, Portugal

Portugal’s capital kicks off its 16th annual gay film fest on September 21 with the award-winning global hit Weekend. Queer Lisboa’s nine days of programming includes a whopping 91 films, including a special Queer Brasil section with eight gay Brazilian flicks. The Olympia Dukakis/Brenda Fricker road movie Cloudburst closes things out.

And by the way, we simply adore the Queer Lisboa promo above, created by Lisbon ad agency FUEL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpAnldMoR5w

Everybody’s Perfect LGBTIQ Film Festival
September 21-30
Geneva, Switzerland

Returning for a second edition after its 2010 debut, Geneva’s Everybody’s Perfect festival will screen 80 films over ten days, including recent worldwide gay hits like Marco Berger’s Ausente (above) and Sdrjan Dragojevic’s Parada, plus classics like Longtime Companion and Far from Heaven. Renowned French activist Louis-Georges Tin, founder of the international Day Against Homophobia, will also give a lecture.

Chéries-Chéris Film Festival
October 5-14
Paris, France

The Parisians are still keeping the details of this year’s Chéries-Chéris Film Festival tightly under wraps, but Têtu says that the majority of the films will be from France , and that Almodovar favorite Rossy de Palma will be among the festival jurists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wFHeNp-zdo

Iris Prize Festival
October 10-14
Cardiff, Wales

The Welsh capital once again presents the unique Iris Prize Festival, in which makers of LGBT shorts compete for a top prize of £25,000 (over $40,000) toward funding their next film. Thirty-one films have been short-listed for this year’s honors, to be awarded at a bigger-than-ever ceremony hosted by the incomparable Amy Lamé.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3dFGULyLQM

MIX Copenhagen

October 19-28
Copenhagen, Denmark

Details for 2012’s MIX Copenhagen won’t be released until this Friday (September 14), but count on the 27th (!) edition of this Danish LGBT film fest (the longest running in Scandinavia) to include an innovative line-up of the best in international gay cinema. 10,000 Danish kroner ($1700+) are up for grabs in the fest’s short film competition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzLoi4B_qBM

Florence Queer Festival
October 25-31
Florence, Italy

This tenth edition of Tuscany’s most important LGBT culture festival includes not just a full lineup of gay films, but photography, music, theater, and art elements as well. The fest’s VideoQueer competition is open to all, and awards a prize of 1000 euros (about $1300) for the best short.

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