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MQFF Pride Month Short Films | Fri 26 June

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MQFF Pride Month Short Films | Fri 26 June

Join us for a special screening presented in partnership with the Melbourne Queer Film Festival (MQFF), Australia’s longest‑running queer film festival and a leading platform for LGBTQIA+ storytelling. This curated program of short films showcases diverse, contemporary queer voices from Australia and around the world, offering an engaging and inclusive cultural experience. Delivered locally in partnership with Greater Shepparton City Council and GV Pride, this event provides an opportunity to connect, reflect, and celebrate community through film in a welcoming and accessible environment.
Rated: MA15+ Suitable for people aged 15 and over
Under 15s must be accompanied by a parent or guardian
Venue: University of Melbourne – Shepparton (Department of Rural Health) / Campus Lecture Theatre, 49 Graham Street, Shepparton.
Film Synopsis – MQFF Pride Month Shorts 2026
OVERVIEW
Direct from Melbourne Queer Film Festival, we are proud to bring you the latest in Australian LGBTQIA+ filmmaking with the 2026 Pride Month Short Films package — a bold and emotionally resonant collection showcasing award-winning voices and some of the country’s most exciting emerging talent. Spanning comedy, drama and horror, these exceptional films celebrate the richness, complexity and brilliance of queer Australian lives through stories that are moving, powerful, provocative and unforgettable.
SYNOPSIS
Sparkles, 2021
Country: Australia
Director: Jacqueline Pelczar
Capturing hearts and minds and taking out the VicScreen Award for Best Director, Sparkles is a drama about a 30-something woman with Down syndrome who leaves her past behind and runs away from a small country town for the city. Along her journey, she makes an unlikely friendship with an Outback Drag Queen, teaching us all not to be afraid to celebrate who we are.
Pineapple, 2023
Country: Australia
Director: Sophie Saville
Winner of the 2023 Pitch Pleez competition, Pineapple is a quirky queer musical rom-com inspired by the director’s comical love life. Young and single Sarah has just moved into her new apartment, only to discover her next-door neighbour is an old flame, Peach. Is this Sarah’s second chance to get the girl that got away? Sarah impulsively asks Peach to her housewarming dinner with a few friends (who are all exes). Over dinner, Sarah’s friends quickly clash with Peach and her questionable life views. But is Sarah too doe-eyed to see this might be a recipe for disaster?
The Pansy of Pickadee, 2023
Country: Australia
Directors: Gus George, Paddy Morahan
Winner of the VicScreen Award for Best Director: Australian Short Film in 2023, this distinctly Aussie outback fable features The Dressmaker star, Roy Barker, narrating a bittersweet line-drawn animation that celebrates a brave queer hero while indulging the love of saucy rhyming couplets.
Welcome To The Cyber Rodeo, 2025
Country: Australia
Director: Jim Muntisov
Beneath pulsing neon and flickering memories, a non-binary cowboy drifts between worlds – mechanical bull rides, pixelated dreams, and past lovers caught on camcorder tape. Welcome To The Cyber Rodeo is director Jim Muntisov’s Pitch Pleez! winning short, a tender fever dream of queer identity, where intimacy flickers like static and connection feels both virtual and vividly real. A meditation on gender, longing, and the quiet magic of being seen – just for a moment.
While We Still Have Time, 2024
Country: Australia
Director: Ava Grimshaw-Hall
While We Still Have Time is the debut from daughter-cum-documentary filmmaker, Ava Grimshaw-Hall, who embarks on a poignant journey to connect with her sperm donor father John, as he battles an aggressive cancer. Together, they explore their unique bond, seeking understanding and closure amidst life’s uncertainties. Recipient of MQFF’s Pitch, Pleez! competition funding, the short was nominated for Best Short-Form Documentary at the 2025 Australian International Documentary Conference and took home the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Short film at the latest edition of the Melbourne Women in Film Festival.
Hold Still, 2024
Country: Australia
Director: Emily Dynes
An origami swan folded in secret. Close friends lying on their backs in the sun. A sanitary pad expanding in the grass. Second glances shared at dawn. ‘Hold Still’ is a collection of the ‘in between’ moments after Logan, a lonely dancer in rural Victoria, meets a tradie at sunrise. Premiering at the 2024 Melbourne Queer Film Festival, where it was awarded the City of Melbourne Prize for Best Short Film, Hold Still was praised as a ‘poignant and immersive’ work. The film was selected as MQFF’s official entry to the prestigious Iris Prize, the world’s richest award for LGBTIQIA+ storytelling.
The Dysphoria, 2025
Country: Australia
Director: Kylie Aoibheann
Winner of the prestigious 2025 MQFF Best Short Film Award, this horror tells the tale of a trans woman inadvertently summoning a demon while performing a ritual in the hope of getting a vagina.
Director Kylie Aoibheann brings together some of Australia’s hottest rising talent to deliver an unflinchingly demonic and darkly comic horror that will leave you wondering what entities may be listening to you from inside the house. Featuring gnarly practical effects and standout performances, this gem of a short film subverts the genre while sacrificing none of the horror tropes we love.

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