Get set to savour new narratives, daring documentaries, and a terrific schedule of short films celebrating the LGBTQIA community’s shared battles and triumphs over the decades.
GAZE International LGBTQIA Film Festival returns to the IFI and The Lighthouse Cinema over seven days including the August bank holiday weekend, presenting a packed lineup of new features, shorts programmes, and discussion events to celebrate queer love, life and legacy across a spectacle of cinema.
From an Irish perspective, this year’s programme includes the much anticipated screening of Lesbian Lines, a fascinating new documentary by Director captures the stories and experiences of volunteer workers in 1970s-1990s Ireland, who quite literally helped save the lives of thousands of women.
This unique reflection on Ireland’s dyke history knits together a tapestry of first-hand recollections and anonymous stories recorded solely in logbooks, and listened to from dingy offices, bathrooms and shared community spaces across Dublin, Cork, Belfast and Galway. Catch it at Lighthouse Cinema on Thursday, July 30th and prepare to fall in love with them all.
Since GAZE’s founding in 1992, queer life has drastically transformed from the unspoken to the hypervisible. This year’s programme of shorts collects historical perspectives on the colonial camera, new visions of video self-portraits, and thrilling narratives of supernatural stalkers to ask: What does it mean to be queer and trans in 2026, when nearly nothing is private, everyone is witnessed, and everything is recorded?
We’re particularly looking forward to seeing Give Me The Ball, the compelling documentary about tennis icon Billie Jean King by Liz Garbus and Elizabeth Wolff featuring a blend of contemporary interviews with Elton John, Serena Williams, and King’s great love, Ilana Kloss. Teeming with joy, anger, rebellion and victory, it screens at the IFI on Sunday.
Nothing beats seeing it on the big screen with an audience of your people. Go see!
GAZE International LGBTQIA Film Festival runs at the IFI and The Lighthouse Cinema from Wed July 29th to Monday August 6th.
