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.

An argentine woman and an American man have a cultural disagreement about intimacy and how romance is conceived.
Highlighting the many ways in which AFF 2023 illustrated that the queer experience is not a monolithic one.
Love, Simon (2018) based on the book “Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda” (by Becky Albertalli) is a teen LGBTQ+ rom-com with themes of longing to find others with similar struggles, and ultimately is a story of acceptance of identity from those around you, and most importantly, from yourself.
I have talked with founder of Red Nation Television Network, Joanelle Romero, and the future of Indigenous representation looks bright.
It’s passionately protective of the women mentioned in the story or appearing on screen. Just like the article and the #MeToo movement, the film could help a trapped person find the courage to fight back.
What seems like such a simple story of survival is so much more than that—it’s a story of family, and of war, and of destruction. It’s painful to watch, but not in a bad way. It makes its audience reflect on their own actions, and in how they are complicit in the sufferings of others as the adults in this film are. Grave of the Fireflies does not hold back from being heartbreaking, and it shouldn’t. It tells a message that needs to be heard decades after the war, and a story that cannot be forgotten by history.