Now that we’re well in to this new year, we’re starting to see the return of some of our favourite film festivals and we were excited to take a closer look at the fifth edition of the Europa! Europa Film Festival which is back in cinemas across Australia and New Zealand  from February 19 to March 19. To take a deep dive in to the program, we welcomed back the festival’s Artistic Director Spiro Economopoulos to tell us more about the 43 films on offer and some of his personal recommendations too.

We also reviewed one of the highlights of this year’s program called ‘Maspalomas’, a beautiful Spanish film that tells the story of Vicente who came out as gay at the age of 50, leaving his wife and daughter back home in San Sebastián, to enjoy the sun-drenched gay resort town of Maspalomas in the Canary Islands After recently splitting up with his partner Esteban in his mid-seventies, Vicente is making the most of his newly single life until one night he suffers a stroke and ending up in a coma. Upon waking up, Vicente finds that he’s been moved to a care home by his estranged daughter and to make matters worse, he finds himself back “in the closet”, since he hasn’t told anyone at the home about his sexual identity.

We ended the show with a recap on the recent award nomination announcements for the GLAAD Media Awards, the 98th Academy Awards and the BAFTA’s including some of the LGBTQIA+ nominees we’re hoping to see pick up a win this award season.

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