Pride Shorts Screening

Next date: Saturday, 11 July 2026 | 07:00 PM to 09:00 PM

Direct from Melbourne Queer Film Festival, we are proud to bring you the latest in Australian LGBTQIA+ filmmaking with the 2026 Pride Short Films package — a bold and emotionally resonant collection showcasing award-winning voices and some of the country’s most exciting emerging talent. Spanning comedy, drama and horror, these exceptional films celebrate the richness, complexity and brilliance of queer Australian lives through stories that are moving, powerful, provocative and unforgettable.

Taking place at Bluestone Church Arts Space with the team from Pride of Our Footscray behind the bar, you're invited to come along and experience the best and brightest of the LGBTIQA+ emerging film making talent that our country has to offer.  Then join us as we celebrate the community at Footscray's premier LGBTIQA+ venue - Pride of Our Footscray. 

For audiences 15+

All Tickets $10 with all monies raised donated to Thorne Harbour Health

Book Now

SYNOPSIS

Sparkles, 2021

Country: Australia

Director: Jacqueline Pelczar

Capturing hearts and minds and taking out the VicScreen Award for Best Director, Sparkles is a drama about a 30-something woman with Down syndrome who leaves her past behind and runs away from a small country town for the city. Along her journey, she makes an unlikely friendship with an Outback Drag Queen, teaching us all not to be afraid to celebrate who we are.

Pineapple, 2023

Country: Australia

Director: Sophie Saville

Winner of the 2023 Pitch Pleez competition, Pineapple is a quirky queer musical rom-com inspired by the director's comical love life. Young and single Sarah has just moved into her new apartment, only to discover her next-door neighbour is an old flame, Peach. Is this Sarah’s second chance to get the girl that got away? Sarah impulsively asks Peach to her housewarming dinner with a few friends (who are all exes). Over dinner, Sarah’s friends quickly clash with Peach and her questionable life views. But is Sarah too doe-eyed to see this might be a recipe for disaster?

The Pansy of Pickadee, 2023

Country: Australia

Directors: Gus George, Paddy Morahan

Winner of the VicScreen Award for Best Director: Australian Short Film in 2023, this distinctly Aussie outback fable features The Dressmaker star, Roy Barker, narrating a bittersweet line-drawn animation that celebrates a brave queer hero while indulging the love of saucy rhyming couplets.

Welcome To The Cyber Rodeo, 2025

Country: Australia

Director: Jim Muntisov

Beneath pulsing neon and flickering memories, a non-binary cowboy drifts between worlds - mechanical bull rides, pixelated dreams, and past lovers caught on camcorder tape. Welcome To The Cyber Rodeo is director Jim Muntisov’s Pitch Pleez! winning short, a tender fever dream of queer identity, where intimacy flickers like static and connection feels both virtual and vividly real. A meditation on gender, longing, and the quiet magic of being seen - just for a moment.

While We Still Have Time, 2024

Country: Australia

Director: Ava Grimshaw-Hall

While We Still Have Time is the debut from daughter-cum-documentary filmmaker, Ava Grimshaw-Hall, who embarks on a poignant journey to connect with her sperm donor father John, as he battles an aggressive cancer. Together, they explore their unique bond, seeking understanding and closure amidst life’s uncertainties. Recipient of MQFF’s Pitch, Pleez! competition funding, the short was nominated for Best Short-Form Documentary at the 2025 Australian International Documentary Conference and took home the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Short film at the latest edition of the Melbourne Women in Film Festival.

Hold Still, 2024

Country: Australia

Director: Emily Dynes

An origami swan folded in secret. Close friends lying on their backs in the sun. A sanitary pad expanding in the grass. Second glances shared at dawn. ‘Hold Still’ is a collection of the ‘in between’ moments after Logan, a lonely dancer in rural Victoria, meets a tradie at sunrise. Premiering at the 2024 Melbourne Queer Film Festival, where it was awarded the City of Melbourne Prize for Best Short Film, Hold Still was praised as a ‘poignant and immersive’ work. The film was selected as MQFF’s official entry to the prestigious Iris Prize, the world’s richest award for LGBTIQIA+ storytelling.

The Dysphoria, 2025

Country: Australia

Director: Kylie Aoibheann

Winner of the prestigious 2025 MQFF Best Short Film Award, this horror tells the tale of a trans woman inadvertently summoning a demon while performing a ritual in the hope of getting a vagina. Director Kylie Aoibheann brings together some of Australia’s hottest rising talent to deliver an unflinchingly demonic and darkly comic horror that will leave you wondering what entities may be listening to you from inside the house. Featuring gnarly practical effects and standout performances, this gem of a short film subverts the genre while sacrificing none of the horror tropes we love.

 

When

Location

Bluestone Church Arts Space, 8A Hyde Street, Footscray, 3011, View Map