A Queer Review of the Austin Film Festival (2023)
Highlighting the many ways in which AFF 2023 illustrated that the queer experience is not a monolithic one.

A bizarre hitman with a soft spot for animals and a taste for cowboy gear gets handed an outrageous assignment. A gambler and a jockey have cooked up a scheme: rig the race, push a sluggish long shot to a shocking win, and walk away with a fortune from the racetrack owner’s pocket. But the owner gets wise to the plan. Determined to shut it down before it starts, he brings in the killer to clean house. Now faced with a fat payday and a moral dilemma, the hitman stands at a crossroads — stick to the job, or help the poor sap escape the crosshairs? One horse sets off a chain reaction that lays bare the greed and humanity buried in every heart.
Highlighting the many ways in which AFF 2023 illustrated that the queer experience is not a monolithic one.
If you've watched 'Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles', you are either someone who believes “nothing happens” in this three and half-hour film or you’re like me who believes everything happens.
Bong Joon Ho’s masterpiece, Parasite (2019) became one of the few international films to break into the American mainstream.
The trouble with Yara (2021) is that in its attempt to tell the whole story, it struggles to tell a consistently engaging story.
Not every film can make a shopping mall feel both magical and menacing, but Forbidden Fruits challenges that.
"His Girl Friday" set the bar for romcoms and gave us a feminist heroine before feminism was cool.