From November 10th to 19th, 21 st edition of the Pink Screens Festival - the queer film festival of Brussels organized by the non-profit organizations Genres d'à côté and Cinéma Nova - will be held!

Pink is not dead and Pink Screens will warm you when the weather gets cold! The 21st edition of Pink Screens - Brussels Queer Film Festival promises an abundance of queer vibes and encounters. Stimulate your mind, fall in love or feast your eyes on our cinemas. Queers make films and do everything they can to explore blind spots, disrupt norms and celebrate the diversity of existence.

We throw ourselves and we don't hold back! A hundred or so films, fiction and documentaries as well as experimental and animated films, long or short, await you. As always, we explore the whole world, extraordinary lives and collective challenges.

This cinematic journey takes us from Mexico to the US border in search of a better life (Te llevo conmigo), to the Amerindian reserves (Wildhood), to the Amazon to become one with the environment (UÝRA, a retomada da floresta) and to a Lebanon in polyamory (Shall I compare you to a Summer's day?). We head east, a not so friendly area, teeming with hypocrisy among the clergy with the "Hot my god" focus - our 'rosary' thread - with a stopover in Poland (All our fears) or at the Croatian nuns (Nun of your business). Yes, the weight of living in a community is heavy, so spare us! We go back to Lebanon where girls play heavy metal (Sirens), to Pakistan with taboos that the most progressive couples overcome (Joyland)... Others go on alone and create their own porn (Ardente-x-s), or become the queens of their own category (I am a Tigress), invent their own subculture (Rebel Dykes) and even their own gang (Ultra Violette and the Blood Spitters).

The best strategies to control our lives and our desires are in ourselves, in the sum of our stories. We pay tribute to those who preceded us, but also ask ourselves what we are leaving behind. In addition to documentaries on pioneers (Gendernaut, Genderation, Les Invisibles), Cinematek will put together a panel of specialists who testify about our present and seek ways to understand it.

Portuguese filmmaker Joao Pedro Rodrigues will be honoured with an almost complete retrospective. Besides his feature films, including his fantastic last opus, Fogo-Fátuo, we will also show some of his short films and installations in our expo.

And finally: Querelle (the film inspired by Genet's novel) is 40 years young! What better way to pay tribute to Fassbinder, who died a few days after shooting it, than to show his ultimate masterpiece in 35mm?

As for short films, there are no less than 9 sessions to discover including a 100% Belgian session and a p*rn hotter than your crush in the NOVA bar.

Pink Screens is also an exhibition in the bar of cinema Nova and in the spaces of Cinéma Galeries, which highlights artists who are out and proud and not shy to make a statement. There will also be 2 geulantes to speak out loud about your convictions, because, as usual, we will not agree on everything. For the rest: lectures, performances, discussions and drinks in the Nova bar. And, of course, there will be meetings and side events with the artists and directors of this festival, a team of crazy volunteers and a Pink Night to make the city sparkle and let's not forget to dance!

The whole team is already delighted to present the illustration of the festival created this year by the painter and filmmaker Tom de Pekin and designed by the graphic design studio Kidnap Your Designer.

Focus Hot my God

The Lord's ways are of course inscrutable, except when we can be guided by strange variations of the divine world. From the birth of a secret romance in a monastery (Nun of your buisness) to a heart-wrenching quest to belong in a conservative Polish village (All our fears) to BDSM (Passion) - you read it right - the Hot my God selection hints at LGBTQIA+ nobility. From fiction to documentary, hope, emancipation, questions or suffering mark the paths of those who are constantly searching for the sacred. A selection of three films exploring some community members' complex relationship with religion.

Focus João Pedro Rodrigues

João Pedro Rodrigues (Lisbon, 1966), by himself or with his partner and accomplice João Rui Guerra da Mata, has made more than 20 internationally acclaimed films (short and feature). His cinema questions the porosity between identities, species and genres - and the solitude without remedy of bodies. On the occasion of the release of his beautiful and offbeat Fogo-Fátuo, we dedicate an almost complete retrospective to his work: 6 feature films (several on 35 mm), a screening of short films, installations in the expo and a master class led by... A unique opportunity to dive ( once again) into the melodramatic and camp universe of one of the most original contemporary filmmakers.