Queer Spectrum Film Festival (QSFF) has launched ‘Filmmaking for Every Body’, calling on LGBTQ+ migrants and queer people of colour living on the island of Ireland to submit micro-short films (up to two minutes) for screening at the Irish Film Institute, Dublin.
QSFF is Ireland’s first film festival dedicated to centring LGBTQ+ people of colour and immigrant voices. First launched in 2023, the festival aims to empower LGBTQ+ filmmakers of colour to celebrate their unique stories.
Proudly organised by Queer Asian Pride Ireland (QAPI), each year, the festival aims to erase the barriers that LGBTQ+ migrants and people of colour often face in the art and film infrastructure, including “language barriers, Western ideas of what art should be, unspoken cultural rules, limited resources, and narrow expectations”.
This year, the festival is taking this mission a step further with ‘Filmmaking for Every Body’, a simple and open callout that is about “making space – for curiosity, for quiet observation, for moments that might otherwise go unseen”.
QSFF is inviting LGBTQ+ migrants and refugees, especially those who feel they do not yet have a place within mainstream cultural spaces, to submit a micro-short film (up to two minutes). The theme is “Tender Migrations – Queer Bodies in Transit”, with QSFF stating that they are interested in films that explore some of the following ideas: community, connection, self-expression, racism, intimacy, love, transition, home, nature, safe space, and living conditions.
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“Migration can be loud or quiet, joyful or heavy, or all of these at once,” the callout states. “Queer bodies in transit carry memory, desire, vulnerability, and resilience. We welcome poetic, abstract, documentary, personal, or experimental responses—whatever form feels right to you.”
In order to submit, people do not need to be filmmakers or have received formal training. “You might film your room, a street you walk every day, or a landscape that feels comforting or unfamiliar. You might use voiceover—or silence. You can work behind the camera. You can even submit your work anonymously. There is no single way to belong to the cinema screen,” QSFF stated.
Selected micro-shorts will be screened at the Irish Film Institute in Dublin, from June 12 to 14, 2026. The deadline for submission is April 15, 2026. Find out more and submit your micro-short here.
© 2026 GCN (Gay Community News). All rights reserved.
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