image+nation

Founded in 1988, image+nation is Canada’s first and oldest LGBTQ film festival. Each year the festival screens the best of queer cinema from around the world at various Montréal venues.

image+nation was established because queer filmgoers wanted to see positive images and stories of themselves up on the silver screen.

Many of the early films and activist videos screened at image+nation dealt with resistance, liberation, AIDS and HIV. During this pre-internet era it was difficult for festival organizers to find films and videos to present until an LGBTQ festival circuit began in the early ’90s, coinciding with the indie “New Queer Cinema” movement.

Today, image+nation continues to play a trendsetting role within the larger festival circuit in Canada, North America and internationally. Over 11 days, the festival screens award-winning features, powerful documentaries and acclaimed short films from such countries as Brazil, France, India and South Africa, offering something for all cinematic tastes – from light-hearted comedies and love stories to deeper dramatic tales and social-issue works.

image+nation helps foster community and identity and illustrates there is still power in gathering in a dark cinema.

The official opening film for the 2019 edition is the acclaimed Swedish-Georgian drama and 2019 Cannes Film Festival hit And Then We Danced about two male dancers in the Georgian ballet. Other must-see films include Zen in the Ice Rift, about a 16-year-old genderqueer living in a small village atop the Italian Apennines who plays on an all-boys hockey team but is bullied for their masculinity; Deux (Two of Us), a French dramedy about pensioners Nina and Madeleine whose hidden love is put to the test; and The Prince (El Principe), about the gay awakening of a young prisoner in 1970 Chile just before Allende came to power.