BFI FLARE 2026 by Helen M Jerome: Spring finally arrives, and so does the BFI Flare Festival. And the quality feels better every time it comes around. What’s more, it goes boldly into big issues one minute, while also celebrating love in comic fashion the next. The only thing that links all the features is their LGBTQIA+ flavour.
So here goes, the seven films I saw across this packed year’s programme, from all around the globe.
By coincidence, the first couple of features in my Flare schedule addressed roadblocks and red tape both universal and specific.
Julian (above), from director Cato Kusters, is based on a memoir and hits lots of highly emotional hot spots on the central couple’s journey. When middle-class lovers, Fleur and Julian, announce their plans to get married, we go back and forward in time to see how they met and instantly fell in love at a concert, and it initially feels like another, regular romantic movie. But it’s not all plain sailing, despite their dinner party friends and resources. They plan their own same-sex marriage at home in Europe, but then get more ambitious, and want to do the same thing across the globe in the 22 different countries where this was permitted, with Fleur commissioned to write a magazine feature around this journey. If this wasn’t already a big task, just as they embark on this adventure, Julian falls ill and we are plunged into a different scenario of desperate scans and biopsies. They have, of course, married in sickness and in health, and much of it is shot in POV style, making you feel further immersed in their story. So it’s hard to be unmoved by the intense passion and jagged grief laid bare here.
Love Letters, from director-screenwriter Alice Douard, is set a decade ago in Paris, where a lesbian couple are crying and wise-cracking through their first pregnancy together. Celine is a club DJ and her pregnant wife Nadia is a dentist, and the upbeat, humorous tone is there from the start. But the brakes are slammed on when they come across a weird bit of French law. Basically their child will have to take her birth mother’s maiden name and Celine will have absolutely no legitimate relationship to their offspring. In fact, she will have to apply to adopt the child. This means getting a total of fifteen friends and relations to express their confidence in Celine as a parent. Which means the awkward task of Celine getting back in touch with her estranged mother, a world-famous concert pianist. This is a fascinating relationship at the heart of the film, with so much historic resentment and abandonment felt by Celine, and an apparently distant mother who has never been able to express her love. Will they reconnect? And how will Nadia’s own ultra-conservative family react? After all, if anything happened to Nadia, they would legally belong to them, not Celine…
Satisfaction (below), from director-screenwriter Alex Burunova is a love triangle about power, control and letting go, boasting a starry cast. Emma Laird plays Lola, a gifted composer, who falls for Fionn Whitehead’s Philip, all the while carrying a memory of a line he crossed very early in their relationship. She has never addressed this, and he has not acknowledged it, but it is festering away beneath the surface, even as they escape for a Greek island working holiday. The other point in the triangle is Elena, to whom Lola is drawn on a nudist beach, played by Zar Amir Ebrahimi from Holy Spider. Meanwhile the imagery of being caged and the abusive control of a wife just down the road from where they’re staying remind us of what’s lurking. The beauty of the blue light and bleached out shots, plus wonderful sound design, music and hissing cicadas, all make the time shifts more obvious and the whole film hugely atmospheric. And it seems only a matter of time before Lola addresses the festering wound from her past with Philip.
Big Girls Don’t Cry is the debut from director-screenwriter Paloma Schneideman. Crucially set in the early 2000s, this uses the most basic messaging on mobiles and computers for teen communication, framing and driving a classic story of unrequited and quizzical teen longing. Set in New Zealand, it centres on shy, lonely 14-year-old Sid, superbly played by Ani Palmer and trying to make it through the endless summer holidays. Her mother’s long gone, and her father (Noah Taylor, gruff and excellent) is not exactly hands-on. Sid has a view, even as her awkward attempts to join the cool kids veers towards seemingly inevitable disaster. What’s worse is she also seems to be alienating the only true friend she has. An endearing and very relatable coming-of-age movie.
Whisperings of the Moon is director Lai Yuqing’s first and unfortunately last film, as she passed away in 2025. Set in Cambodia, it’s an impressionistic, passion-project of a movie with loads of hand-held camera work. You’re immersed in a world of loss and longing, the intoxication of love driving the characters on, even as in parallel they are rehearsing for a play in Phnom Penh.
Black Burns Fast from director-screenwriter Sandulela Asanda is set in South Africa, but feels incredibly familiar as Asanda has clearly studied classic teen movies like Clueless and Mean Girls. From the social-media-style opening titles through to the Peep Show-style POV scenes, this is note-perfect. The location is a posh boarding school, the heroine is the smart, but distinctly un-cool Luthanda, and her dilemma is her unrequited love for new girl Ayanda, who also happens to be a trouble-maker. Her only confidante is best mate Jodie, but much as in Big Girls Don’t Cry, there is a danger she’ll lose her as she moves into the popular girls’ orbit. Luckily, director Asanda has her hand on the tiller, as she steers this story out of choppy waters and into smoother sailing. And Luthanda and Jodie are an immensely likeable duo.
Washed Up (above) from director Isabel Daly – and co-written with Issy Brett and Carys Glynne – was probably my favourite film in the Flare festival. Also starring Glynne (who was also the editor and a producer) this is set on the Lizard in Cornwall, specifically in lovely Mullion. So we get the majority of the movie in English, but with Cornish making occasional appearances, notably when our central character, Morwenna, aka Scummy (Anna Ivankovic), tries to learn the language in zoom lessons. She’s a bit of an Arthur Daley in her commercial enterprises, ducking and weaving, making crafty stuff to flog to tourists, while dealing weed and coping with a recent break-up with her girlfriend. Then (please suspend your disbelief at this point).
Scummy encounters a stranger on the beach, Inga (Glynne), who just happens to be a selkie (a kind of mermaid) who turns into a seal when she goes back into the sea. This gave me flashbacks to a Cornish childhood steeped in Celtic myth and mystery and specifically the Mermaid of Zennor. She falls hard for Inga, and the feeling is mutual, but obviously the elephant in the room is that Inga must return to the sea at some point, despite Scummy’s best efforts. Full of quirkiness, you cannot resist the charm that envelops the whole film and all its characters, from the bad fortune-telling step-grandmother to the dodgy cousin, every one of them endearing. The soundtrack is lush, the cinematography is excellent and much like Scummy’s wardrobe, this movie is stuffed full of treats. And lots and lots of laughs.