Susan Thomson

Combining archival footage with rotoscopic animation, Tower reveals the action-packed untold stories of the witnesses, heroes and survivors of America’s first mass school shooting, when the worst in one man brought out the best in so many others.

Floating between conceptual documentary and experimental fiction, this film chronicles the 25,000 metres that Thomson swam during the period of her mother’s death. An adaptation of her book, it uses dance, music and memorial archives to translate text into movement.

A look at the numerous recent arrests of gay men in Northern Turkish occupied Cyprus, including even the former Finance Minister of the Republic of Cyprus, under a British colonial law dating from 1889. The film looks at the internationally unrecognized North of Cyprus, the last divided capital of Europe and also the last place in Europe to criminalize homosexuality. The film talks to lawyers involved in a case taken to the European Court of Human Rights, and the ultimate repeal of the law in January 2014.

A dreamy, experimental documentary exploring the legacy of British colonialism in Mauritius and the Chagos Islands. It traces two constitutional challenges to colonial-era sodomy laws and the ongoing fight of displaced Chagossians to return home. As the criminalisation of LGBTQ+ lives collides with climate injustice and contested sovereignty, the film reveals how imperial power continues to shape legal systems, identities, and land rights. A haunting meditation on queer struggle, forced displacement, and the unfinished business of decolonisation.

In his first film, A Prayer for Nettie, Donigan Cumming had placed Albert at the heart of the posthumous tribute to Nettie, his former model. One year later, he composed Cut the Parrot, a new requiem intended for Albert, who also died amid total indifference. As in his previous film, the film-maker gathered a series of eulogies in honour of the deceased from the people, some close and others not so close, who were emotionally affected by his death. But this film differs from the previous one in that it seems to be based not only on respect but also on an intense anger. Several times Donigan films his own face and angrily tells about how he was informed of Albert's death or about his visit to the morgue to identify the body. From then on the principle behind his cinematographic quest seems clearly exposed: no life, however marginal it may seem, should end in such a way, without any consideration.

A documentary that looks at the anti-homosexuality law in Singapore, section 377A, which criminalizes male homosexuality with up to two years of a prison sentence. A British colonial law, it is based on the Victorian era Labouchere amendment, the same law which criminalized Oscar Wilde in England a century ago. This film looks at two constitutional challenges being taken by Tan Eng Hong and Gary Lim and Kenneth Chee between 2010 and 2014, one resulting from a conviction as the result of sex in a public toilet, the other brought by a couple who have been together 16 years.