For the 25th time, the Mezipatra Queer Film Festival, organised by civil associations Mezipatra and STUD Brno, will present Czech and foreign films showcasing LGBTQ+ themes in Prague and Brno. This year, 25 feature films and 48 short films will be presented from 7-14 November in Prague and 15-22 November in Brno. Of the 73 films presented throughout the festival, 10 of them will enter the official selection, to be evaluated by an expert jury as part of the international competition.
The Brno section of the festival will see films screened in Kino Art, Kino Lucerna, and Kino Scala, as well as some films to be screened in unrevealed secret locations. The festival will culminate with a closing party on 22 November in Kino Scala.
The name of the festival, ‘Mezipatra’ means ‘mezzanine’. The committee explains that “a mezzanine is a space that is neither above nor below. Whether you go down the stairs or go up, you will meet your neighbours in the middle in a space that does not belong to a single apartment. Mezzanines do not have a specific owner, nor do only someone’s rules apply in it. In the mezzanine, all differences are irrelevant, it doesn’t matter which floor you came from. You are just here and welcome.”
The theme of the 2024 edition of the Mezipatra Queer Festival, Queer liberates, refers to the theme of breaking from the stereotypes driven by society as well as shattering the traditional binary division of the world.
“When we decided 11 years ago to organise the first Czech gay and lesbian film festival in the Moravian capital, we had no idea that in a few years it would become the largest queer event in the Czech Republic,” said the festival committee.
Around 12,000 spectators visit the festival every year, and are welcomed to take part in discussions, lectures, workshops and parties which are also part of the program.
The idea of the festival is to provide a safe space to discover the diversity of gender identity and sexual orientation. The event welcomes everyone who wants to be more familiar with the term queer and all its representations in the LGBTQ+ community by organising meetings inviting people to speak freely about their experience or to discuss the queer representation in a movie from the festival selection for example.
Usually misunderstood, the term queer is used to embrace anyone who feels their sexual orientation or gender identity does not correspond to the traditional perception given by society. It breaks the traditional thinking of classifying people according to their sex – male/female, or their sexual orientation – heterosexual/homosexual, underlining the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community.
To complete the experience, important personalities are often invited to the Mezipatra Queer Festival to engage in discussions with the public and explain the vision of their latest movie. In the past few years, the festival welcomed important directors such as Todd Haynes and Monica Treut, as well as the first trans winner of the Swedish Guldbagge award, actress Saga Becker. The festival also regularly hosts experts in film criticism, academia, journalism, music, visual arts or international diplomacy.
For more information and the full program for this year’s Mezipatra festival, see the festival website.
