BFI Flare returns to London this March for its 40th edition, running from 18 to 29 March at BFI Southbank. Over forty years, the festival has grown from a small specialist showcase into one of the most widely recognised LGBTQIA+ film festivals in the world. This anniversary edition reflects on that journey while keeping its attention firmly on the present. The 2026 programme brings together new films from across the globe alongside talks, retrospectives and events that trace how queer cinema has shifted, expanded and increasingly intersected with the mainstream.
This year’s selection includes features and shorts from nearly fifty countries, with a strong showing of world and UK premieres. Rather than grouping films by fixed identity categories, Flare continues to organise its programme around themes. Hearts, Bodies, Minds and Treasures offer loose points of entry, making the festival easy to navigate for first time visitors as well as returning audiences. The result is a programme that speaks not only to queer experience, but to anyone interested in relationships, social change and contemporary storytelling.
The festival opens with Hunky Jesus, a high energy documentary centred on San Francisco’s Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. It is playful and political in equal measure, grounded in activism and community, and sets an open, confident tone for the days ahead. The Special Presentation, Big Girls Don’t Cry, moves in a quieter direction. Set in early 2000s New Zealand, it follows a teenager through a summer of emotional uncertainty and first awakenings, capturing the intensity of that age without forcing the drama. The festival closes with Black Burns Fast, a South African boarding school drama that explores friendship, attraction and self discovery with warmth and momentum.
Much of the programme’s emotional core sits within the Hearts strand, which looks at love and connection in all their complicated forms. Amantes offers a sharp and contemporary take on lesbian dating in Paris. Another Man focuses on adult restlessness and the pull of unexpected attraction. ìfé: (The Sequel) reconnects with characters from Nigeria’s first lesbian feature, checking in years later to see how time and compromise reshape intimacy. Elsewhere, The Little Sister explores sexuality and faith through the eyes of a French Algerian teenager, while Washed Up blends romance and folklore against a rugged Cornish coastline.
The Bodies strand turns attention toward physicality, transformation and how identity is lived day to day. Films here range from naturalistic dramas to more stylised and experimental work. Bearcave traces the emotional undercurrents of a long standing friendship between two girls. Body of Our Own follows resilience and sisterhood over an extended period of time. Other titles use genre, fantasy or heightened visuals to explore how people inhabit their bodies and desires, rather than trying to define them neatly.
In Minds, the focus widens to questions of culture, memory and collective experience. These films tend to step back and reflect, looking at art, politics and representation through personal and historical lenses. Several documentaries revisit influential figures or reconsider familiar cultural moments, asking who shapes narratives and whose voices are allowed to endure.
Alongside the feature films, BFI Flare’s short film programmes remain a highlight. They showcase emerging filmmakers and a wide range of styles, from intimate realism to playful experimentation. The festival also continues Five Films for Freedom with the British Council, making a small selection of shorts available to watch online worldwide. It is a simple but pointed reminder that access to storytelling is still uneven, and often contested.
At forty, BFI Flare feels less like a niche event and more like a broad cultural meeting place. While rooted in queer experience, the 2026 programme reaches outward, engaging with universal questions of identity, belonging and connection. It is a festival that invites curiosity, whether you are deeply familiar with queer cinema or simply looking for films that reflect the world in all its complexity. Explore Flare programme
