This June, Cork will host a special screening as part of Queer Cinema for Palestine 2025, a cultural initiative bringing together artists, activists, and communities in solidarity with Palestine through the lens of queer cinema. The festival is also coming to Dublin’s Outhouse LGBTQ+ Centre on June 20.
The event is one of many taking place across over 25 countries, uniting more than 50 international partners in a shared call for justice, freedom, and artistic resistance.
Presented in collaboration with PRAXIS (Ireland’s artist workers’ union), Sonflour (Cork’s beloved vegetarian Italian restaurant and cultural space), and the Queer Spectrum Film Festival (Ireland’s first film festival centring LGBTQ+ people of colour and immigrant stories), the event marks an intersection of local and global movements.
At its heart is a commitment to challenge colonial violence, question borders and binaries, and celebrate queer life in all its complexity.
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The screening is free to attend but with very limited capacity, and booking is essential. It promises not just an evening of film, but a gathering rooted in community, conversation, and collective action.
Below is the full list of showings for the event.
Abgad Hawaz, Robin Riad, 1min, Canada (2024)
Audio: Arabic, English, Subtitles: N/A
Out of Gaza, Seza Tiyara Selen, Jannis Osterburg, 9min, Germany (2025)
Audio: German, Arabic, Subtitles: English
Blood Like Water, Dima Hamdan, 14min, Palestine (2023)
Audio: Arabic, Subtitles: English
A tangled web drowning in honey, Tara Hakim & Hannah Hull, 9min, Canada (2023)
Audio: English, Subtitles: English
Aliens in Beirut, Raghed Charabaty, 16min, Lebanon, Canada (2025)
Audio: Arabic, English, Subtitles: English
Palcorecore, Dana Dawud, 8min, Internet footage from Palestine (2023)
Audio: Arabic and English, Subtitles: English
I never promised you a Jasmine Garden, Teyama AlKamli, 20min, Canada (2023)
Audio: Arabic, English, Subtitles: English
Don’t take my joy away, Omar Gabriel, 7min, Lebanon (2024)
Audio: Arabic, Subtitles: English
More than just a film event, Queer Cinema for Palestine is a bold act of cultural boycott and resistance, coordinated by PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel).
The initiative invites artists and audiences to stand in solidarity with Palestinian struggles, refusing complicity in systems of oppression and occupation. Through film, it asks urgent questions about freedom, how those stories are told, who gets to speak, and what it means to resist through art.
This year’s edition focuses on queer voices from Palestine and the wider SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) region, offering perspectives that are often marginalised within both mainstream media and traditional solidarity spaces. The films themselves are varied in style and tone, but united in their commitment to storytelling as a tool for liberation.
With ongoing violence and displacement in Palestine, Queer Cinema for Palestine takes on even greater urgency. It is an invitation to bear witness, to listen, and to act in solidarity with queer Palestinians and all those living under occupation.
© 2025 GCN (Gay Community News). All rights reserved.
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