Thank Your Lucky Starz

This year’s lineup for the Starz Film Fest dazzles

The Starz Denver Film Festival screens Nov. 12 – 23 at area theaters, and this year’s program offers some choice LGBT titles in its Cinema Q program. Here’s the rundown:

Writer/director Karim Aïnouz’s superb new film, “Futuro Beach” concerns a hunky Brazilian lifeguard, Donato (Wagner Moura) who bonds — often in the naked, physical sense — with Konrad (Clemens Schick), a tourist who is grieving the loss of his friend. After Donato visits Konrad in Germany, their relationship deepens and changes.

Things change even more when Ayrton, Donato’s younger brother played by Jesuita Barboso, takes over the narrative in the film’s third act. Aïnouz’s deliberately elliptical style of storytelling captures the ebb and flow of its characters’ erotic and emotional currents. This, along with outstanding cinematography, is what makes the film so mesmerizing.

Another worthwhile Brazilian entry is Davi Pretto’s dazzling character study, “Castanha.” The film provides a terrific showcase for actor/subject João Carlos Castanha, a gay man who works as an actor and drag emcee at local gay clubs. He only feels alive when he’s performing. He is fabulous on stage, playing the hostess with “beauty, sensuality, malice, and perfume,” lip-synching and generating laughs dishing about the club’s beefy bare-assed dancers, and cracking wise about penis size. But the film is equally interesting (and candid) when he is off stage, where the actor’s quiet despair is palpable. “Castanha” is both sympathetic and compelling as it mixes fiction and reality.

The festival’s Cinema Q program also includes two fantastic non-fiction films. “Limited Partnership” is a touching documentary addressing the immigration and marriage laws that could potentially divide same-sex couples. Richard Adams and Tony Sullivan met in 1971, and they even got married in Boulder, Colorado when a clerk granted same-sex marriages back in the 1970s. (Shout out to Clela Rorex!) However, when Australian-citizen Sullivan wanted equal rights protection after marrying an American, he received an offensive letter in response from the US government. Their court case took years, and it decided that the men must leave the country if they wanted to stay together. Director Thomas G. Miller nimbly traces their relationship through activism, art, and archival footage to show their “strange patience” with their legal status. Tony’s willingness to be undocumented and live underground to fight for his rights is inspiring, as is the stirring testimonies by Richard and Tony. Their story resonates in light of the wave of recent legal decisions that have benefitted LGBT couples.

An astonishing doc not to be missed (and about which almost nothing should be revealed) is “An Honest Liar.” The film, directed by Tyler Measom and Justin Weinstein, is a clever portrait of James “The Amazing” Randi, a gay man and a magician who debunks folks such as Uri Geller who use trickery to con people. The film is vastly entertaining as Randi shows off his talents, but it gets even better when he reveals a particularly astounding situation.

The festival also features a quartet of queer shorts that showcases some talented up-and-coming filmmakers. Dennis Shinner’s “Barrio Boy” is a charming film about Quique (Dennis Garcia), a gay barber in Brooklyn who secretly pines for a new client, Kevin (Dan Leonard). In the process of cutting Kevin’s hair, Quique articulates his desires for what he wants from this handsome young man in a romantic and heartfelt voiceover.

Another fine short, “Adjust-a-Dream” by Jonathan Wysocki, has a gay couple, Anthony (Doug Tompos) and Jake (Tom DeTrinis), rethinking their big step of moving in together when they look at a new mattress. The two actors are perfectly matched as they express their preferences — and their bitterness — and confront issues of communication and compromise in their relationship.

Two other queer shorts (unavailable for preview) include “I Love Hooligans,” an animated entry about a closeted football hooligan, and “Under the Last Roof.”

Also playing at the fest is the Alan Turing-based film, “The Imitation Game.” Turing, played by an Oscar-worthy Benedict Cumberbatch, was a gay man with a great mind. As this terrific film shows, he had few social skills, alienating his colleagues at Bletchley Park, where he was hired to help break the code of the Nazi Enigma machine. (There is a great interview scene.) This film, which toggles back and forth in time, reveals a young Alan being bullied at school and his love for a male classmate, as well as his investigation by the police for “gross indecency.” In between, the film crackles with the code-breaking drama and Turing’s friendship with Joan Clarke (a superb Keira Knightley). Although slick and manipulative, “The Imitation Game” is a highly satisfying crowd-pleaser.

In addition, four other films at the festival that feature LGBT characters include the hilarious screwball mystery “Wild Canaries,” the Nordic noir “In Order of Disappearance,” and the documentaries “Hotline” and “The Overnighters.”

For tickets, showtimes and more information, contact DenverFilm.org.