XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin
For the 16th year, XPOSED shows film by, with and about the queer community
For the 16th year, XPOSED shows film by, with and about the queer community
Love, Sex & Cinema Film Festival is an international celebration of films that explore desire, connection, vulnerability, and the spaces where bodies and emotions meet.
We showcase bold, thoughtful cinema that treats intimacy as storytelling – not spectacle. From subtle moments of closeness to raw explorations of love and longing, these films aren’t afraid to look closely at what it means to be human.
The inaugural Love, Sex & Cinema Film Festival starts off with a bang!
Opening the festival is Ro & Luka, a raw and honest German short documentary by Berlin-based directors Sienna Quayle and Oliver Zech. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the filmmakers.
This will be followed by the German premiere of Canadian hybrid documentary Modern Whore, directed by Nicole Bazuin and starring writer, performer and sex worker Andrea Werhun. Modern Whore premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2025 and was selected for the Palm Springs International Film Festival this year. Don’t miss this rare chance to experience Modern Whore on the big screen, right here in Berlin.
RO & LUKA | Dir. Sienna Quayle, Oliver Zech | Germany | 12:25 + filmmaker Q&A
English with German subtitles
A portrait of a genderqueer couple who have built their life around sex work in Berlin, serving primarily male clients. It’s an intimate look at a partnership in which sex is both private and professional, and at the mutual care that holds their world together.
MODERN WHORE | Dir. Nicole Bazuin | Canada | 80:00
English with German subtitles
Modern Whore is a hybrid documentary that reimagines popular depictions of sex work through the lived experiences of writer, performer, and sex worker, Andrea Werhun. Based on her book Modern Whore: A Memoir, Andrea grapples with social stigma and reclaims her narrative in a series of funny, heartbreaking, and surprising stories.
Love, Sex & Cinema begins at 19:00. Come curious.
Love, Sex & Cinema Film Festival is an international celebration of films that explore desire, connection, vulnerability, and the spaces where bodies and emotions meet.
We showcase bold, thoughtful cinema that treats intimacy as storytelling – not spectacle. From subtle moments of closeness to raw explorations of love and longing, these films aren’t afraid to look closely at what it means to be human.
Night 2: Love & Connection is a curated selection of films celebrating the many ways we find, lose and redefine love and connection with others and ourselves.
Q&As will take place with attending filmmakers.
LINGER ON WITH ME | Dir. Anika Mätzke | Germany | 10:48 | Drama
Vivi and Milo spend an unusual nighttime date in a plaster statue collection. Do they capture the perfect moment forever, or will they look back on it melancholically?
NO ONE HAS EVER LOOKED AT ELEPHANTS AS YOU DO | Dir. Sandra Jovanovska | Slovenia | 9:57 | Experimental
A lyrical and visually rich animated poem exploring the transformation of motherhood into a pure, primal state of being.
DESIRE | Dir. Lula Dahringer | Germany, Spain | 15:01 | Drama
Caught between duty and desire, Ginu finds herself suffocating in the quiet familiarity of a long-term relationship. When she begins therapy with Dr. Speck, their sessions slip into forbidden intimacy.
BUSH | Dir. Danielle LeBlanc | USA | 14:27 | Comedy
Darcy desperately tries to remove her bush before she has sex with her boyfriend.
THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE | Dir. Valerie Cappuccino Cocos | Russia, Thailand | 3:20 | Drama
Three stories explore different forms of connection: a man who flees his feelings for another city and remembers the girl he left behind; a girl from a tribe by the ocean who loses her identity each time she finds love; and a couple who have lost their emotional intimacy behind the mask of physical intimacy.
TWO | Dir. Klāvs Liepiņš | Iceland | 7:12 | Experimental
A visual poem about an unwritten love story between two men. What could not exist between them begins to take shape in the natural world, the place where they are most deeply connected. Nature becomes the only space where their presence can coexist.
DON’T FEEL SORRY FOR ME! | Dir. Eir í Ólavsstovu | Faroe Islands | 9:19 | Drama
After ten years of marriage, Birgit is confronted with the ultimate betrayal – her younger husband, Hanus, has moved in with a new, younger woman.
LOVE SPELLS | Dir. Michael Plewa | USA | 12:00 | Romance
Two working magicians fall in love on New Year’s Eve, only to realise their divergent career prospects might be impossible to overcome.
Join us at 19:00 for an evening exploring love, connection, and all the messy, beautiful spaces in between.
Love, Sex & Cinema Film Festival is an international celebration of films that explore desire, connection, vulnerability, and the spaces where bodies and emotions meet.
We showcase bold, thoughtful cinema that treats intimacy as storytelling – not spectacle. From subtle moments of closeness to raw explorations of love and longing, these films aren’t afraid to look closely at what it means to be human.
Night 3: Sex & Desire is a curated selection of films exploring sexuality, attraction, intimacy and the many ways we experience and express desire.
Q&As will take place with attending filmmakers.
COLDSORES | Dir. Ina Morkin | Germany | 11:13 | Comedy
A fun and sexy tale following twenty-something Allie as she navigates her dating life after a (not so fun and sexy) genital herpes diagnosis.
THE LOVER | Dir. Cadenza Zhao | Germany | 15:00 | Drama
Haunted by grief, Daniel fills the void with casual sex, hoping to escape his loneliness. But when he can no longer ignore the truth, he’s forced to face the emotions he has been running from.
BRUSH ME | Dir. Nikolaus Jantsch | Austria | 2:00 | Comedy
In a bustling bathroom, amidst the chaos of everyday life, two toothbrushes find themselves drawn to each other. A heartwarming tale of love, loss and the resilience of the toothbrush spirit.
HOUSE PLAY | Dir. Alberto De La Rosa | USA | 11:03 | Drama
A couple receives a visit from a young man who begins to clean their apartment, but as doubt and desire take over, unexpected dynamics are soon revealed.
PORTRAIT OF DESIRE | Dir. Nina Degraeve | Belgium | 14:56 | Experimental
For one night, artist Romina Remmo invites us to experience the sensations of her suggestive work, imbued with eroticism and femininity. Exploring the imagination and hidden side of the artist, the film takes us into a labyrinth of thoughts and fantasies where desire brushes against violence and seduction borders on suffering.
FUR CHANGE | Dir. Lioba Schmidt | Germany | 15:00 | Experimental
With the help of a mouse, a young woman begins to rediscover her relationship with her body and break through the boundaries imposed by ideas of naturalness and social convention. A tactile exploration of body hair, touch and physicality across species and gender.
HOTSPOT | Dir. Yann Cado, Julien Ordan | Switzerland | 4:20 | Comedy
During a chic cocktail party, two friends’ conversation drifts to the topic of sharing. Lucie expresses her scepticism about the need to share in life. Wanting to change her mind, Sélène doesn’t realise she will soon have to question everything she thought she knew about the subject.
LEO & ANNA | Dir. Luca Forcignanò Serri | Italy | 15:00 | Drama
Set entirely in an abstract bedroom, Leo & Anna unfolds the arc of a love story through five intimate scenes. Without dialogue, the film explores the complexity of their bond through body language, subverting conventional romantic narratives.
Join us at 21:30 for a night of bold, playful and provocative cinema exploring sex, desire and intimacy in all its forms.
The film series Transit – Stories of Travellers and Migrants explores the places where we were born and raised, as well as the places to which we have migrated and where we live today. We are filmmakers born in the former Soviet Union, Ethiopia, Palestine, and Israel, who eventually found ourselves in Germany, Israel, or elsewhere: some by choice, others not. Some of our migrations are geographical and external; others are political, emotional, and internal. Some of the countries we come from no longer exist, while others are struggling for their future and self-definition.
Driven by a desire to understand the particular perspective of migrants, we journey into our own pasts while taking a critical look at the present. In this film series, we bring our films and ourselves together and enter into dialogue with one another – even when, or precisely because, our narratives contradict each other, even when one person's arrival marks the beginning of another's uprooting.
Masel Tov Cocktail – 30 min
German with English subtitles
Migrant? Russian? Jewish? All of the above. That's Dima. And Dima lives in Germany, out of all places. He didn't choose any of this. But then he happens to break a classmate's nose… Dima is the protagonist of "Masel Tov Cocktail", a 30-minute fiction film that approaches the subject of being Jewish in Germany in a highly entertaining and (self-)ironic way.
Super Women – 80 min
Russian and Hebrew with English subtitles
The protagonists of "Super Women" are migrant, Russian, and Jewish too: this documentary follows five women working at the checkout of a supermarket in Tel Aviv, recounting their personal stories against the backdrop of life in Israel during the 2000s.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and rising antisemitism prompted many Jews to leave their homelands during the 1980s and 1990s. Being Jewish was recorded in Soviet passports – visible to all – even though most Jews in the Soviet Union lived secular lives. More than 200,000 people came to Germany as Jewish quota refugees, while over 800,000 moved to Israel. Both migration movements were politically orchestrated. Germany understood this as an act of reparation for the Shoah; Israel justified it by invoking the historical homeland. Yet officials and major media outlets in both countries failed to mention that many of those who arrived were highly educated academics whose degrees and social status were effectively reset to zero upon migration.
From 10:00 am – Doors open
11:00 am – "Masel Tov Cocktail" (fiction film, 30 min.)
11:30 am – "Super Women" (documentary, 80 min.)
approx. 1:30 pm – Conversation in the foyer
Included with your ticket: a bruschetta or a sfogliata.
Yael Reuveny and Evgenia Gostrer (curators) with Arkadij Khaet (director, "Masel Tov Cocktail") and Dr. Dina Berdichevsky (literary scholar)
The film series takes place in cooperation with the Institut für Neue Soziale Plastik. The Institut für Neue Soziale Plastik is a collective of Jewish and antisemitism-critical directors, dramaturgs, authors, and artists. Since its founding in 2015, it has developed artistic projects from a Jewish perspective on Jewish life and history, memory culture, and antisemitism. A further focus of its work is advising cultural institutions, independent groups, curators, and artists on questions of antisemitism.
https://neue-soziale-plastik.de/en/
