The 17th Annual QFest St. Louis is returning to the Hi-Pointe Theatre April 26-28 and May 3-5. With programming that uses contemporary gay cinema to spotlight the lives of LGBTQ+ people and celebrate queer culture, this year’s slate boasts nine features (four narrative and five documentaries) and 18 shorts.
This year’s fest is the first for Cinema St. Louis’ newly minted director of festival curation and education, Emmett Williams, who joined the organization in February 2024. Williams is already putting his personal stamp on the fest, implementing a theme to help guide curation. “All of our festivals will have a theme going forward and that will help direct and funnel what we choose to curate,” he says.
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This year the theme is “Love,” specifically exploring love in all of its forms and what people in the LGBTQ+ community have to go through to be allowed to love. “Something that is important to me, and everyone at Cinema St. Louis, is that everyone sees themself on the screen,” Williams says.
Tickets and passes are on sale now for the fest and available online. Here are few of the highlights viewers can expect from the 2024 program.
April 26, 7:30 p.m.
Starting things off with a bang, the first screening of QFest is the world premiere of Concerto for Abigail. The film follows a world-renowned pianist who learns she has progressive hearing loss and faces the possibility of total deafness just as love enters her life. Williams notes that director Jan Miller Corran will be in attendance for a pre-film reception and the screening, along with members of the cast.
April 27, 1 p.m.
A crowd favorite from the 2023 St. Louis International Film Festival, the documentary Transmexico returns to the Hi-Pointe for an encore screening. Director Claudia Ymi Sanchez focuses her camera on transgender women living in Mexico, which has the highest murder rate for trans women in the world. Despite these challenges, the women in Sanchez’s film continue to lead empowered, fulfilling lives.
April 27, 7:30 p.m.
While some may be familiar ballroom culture from either the film Paris is Burning or the FX series Pose, TENS Across the Board takes a look at the St. Louis ballroom community, specifically the performers of the TENS Experience. Williams notes that, in addition to a Q&A with director Bobby Best, there will also be ballroom performances by performers from the film following the screening.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
May 3, 7 p.m.
This 1994 film from director Stephan Elliott stars Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce, and Terrence Stamp as two drag queens and a trans woman embarking on a trip to perform a drag show at a remote Australian resort in their lavender bus, named Priscilla. Over the course of this whirlwind trip, the three encounter a cadre of colorful characters, as well as incidents of homophobia, while expanding comfort zones along the way.
May 4, 4 p.m.
Director Dee Rees’ 2011 breakout feature, Pariah, follows a Brooklyn teenager struggling with conflicting identities who puts many relationships in jeopardy in her desperate search for sexual expression. This screening will feature a post-film panel discussion featuring Merlin Bell of the Poplar Institute for Film, who will share what it means to be Black and queer in St. Louis in 2024 as part of Cinema St. Louis’ ongoing Race in America program.
To learn more about QFest St. Louis and purchase tickets, visit cinemastlouis.org/qfest.
