GAZE International LGBTQIA Film Festival has announced its programme for 2025. Taking place from July 29 to August 4, the lineup promises a spectacular celebration of Irish and international queer cinema.

The 33rd edition is being officially launched at an event in the Irish Film Institute (IFI) on Tuesday, June 24, which will be followed by a special screening of short films. Featuring works like the Iris Prize-winning Palestinian film Blood Like Water, the selection will celebrate LGBTQ+ people around the world campaigning for equal rights, from Australia to Japan, and the US to Ireland.

These works will offer a taste of what’s to come later in the summer when GAZE returns to the IFI, as well as the Light House Cinema, for the 2025 festival.

Opening the seven-day programme on July 29 will be Plainclothes, a hot and heavy gay drama starring Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey. Other titles to look out for across the week included Irish trans rom-com Girls & Boys, ‘90s lesbian classic High Art, Drive Back Home featuring Alan Cumming, the multi-award-winning Oslo Stories Trilogy: Dreams, and must-see documentary Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror.

GAZE will also present 3*3, a series of three special screenings including films on a subject close to the festival’s heart. These include Three Queer Migration Stories, Three Japanese Love Stories and Three HIV Legacy Stories.

Beyond that, there’ll be an array of queer animation, as well as Irish speaking films, and so much more. And it’s not just films you can look forward to at GAZE 2025; the festival also promises talks with many exciting visiting filmmakers.

Speaking about his fourth and final GAZE programme, Festival Director Greg Thorpe shared, “There’ll be popcorn and tears before bedtime! Life for the queer community is (as) fraught and unpredictable as when I took over, but one thing we can depend on is the power of queer cinema to sustain and astound us.”

Chair of the GAZE board Tom Creed added, “We’re hugely grateful to our outgoing Festival Director Greg Thorpe who carried the GAZE flag into its fourth decade and brought us so many unforgettable nights at the cinema with his excellent taste and great humanity. Our amazing team should be the envy of any arts or film festival in Ireland, and the board are enormously grateful to them for all their work year-round to bring us a thrilling and remarkably well-organised week of film and events.

“We couldn’t do this without the Arts Council and a range of new funders who have come on board to support our work, and I want to pay special tribute to our Festival Friends who stick with us year on year to help us make it all happen.”

To view the full GAZE programme for 2025 and book tickets, click here.

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