Lights, Camera, Pride: The Muskoka Queer Film Festival 2026
Now in its seventh year, the Muskoka Queer Film Festival (MQFF) is back — and this year it’s doing something exciting and new. Rather than a single concentrated festival weekend, the 2026 edition spreads across four months from April to July, offering five themed evenings of film that together showcase 30 powerful queer stories from around the world. All screenings are held at the beautiful Rene M. Caisse Memorial Theatre in Bracebridge, in partnership with Theatre Muskoka.
Tickets are $15 per evening, or grab a Festival Pass for all five shows for just $45. Tickets available at mqff.ca.
April 21 — Canadian Stories Doors 6:30pm | Films 7pm
The festival opens with a celebration of Canadian queer storytelling. The Regulation of Desire draws on Gary Kinsman’s landmark book to explore Canada’s historic “Purge” — when queer people were surveilled, targeted, and persecuted — reimagined through the language of ballet. Pink Elephant is a short about a long-standing friendship pushed into conflict by questions of gender identity, before a life-changing piece of news shifts everything. Red Bay takes us to wartime Spain in 1943, where a young farmhand working alongside the underground Comet Network finds his life forever changed by a relationship with a refugee pilot. Closing the evening is Starwalker, a moving and vibrant Canadian feature following Star, an Indigi-Queer Two-Spirit person newly drawn into the world of drag through the legendary House of Borealis and its compelling matriarch, Mother.
May 15 — Differing Abilities In association with Community Living South Muskoka Doors 6:30pm | Films 7pm
This thoughtfully curated evening shines a light on the intersection of queerness and disability. A Place Where I Belong follows six LGBTQ+ individuals with intellectual disabilities as they navigate identity, love, and systemic barriers through an innovative program called Connecting Queer Communities — a documentary full of warmth, solidarity, and hard-won joy. Alongside it, Own Kind of Beautiful centres on Frank Hull, a dance artist living with cerebral palsy and madness who proudly embraces his Mi’kmaq heritage and his gay identity, in a film that is both a portrait of an extraordinary artist and a celebration of a life lived fully and on his own terms.
May 19 — Lives in Many Seasons Doors 6:30pm | Films 7pm
The most expansive programme of the season explores queerness across the full arc of life — youth, middle age, and the approach of endings. On Queer Aging and Endings is an intimate short documentary built around a tender conversation with a renowned Norwegian trans activist, exploring aging, illness, and mortality within queer and trans communities. Vestiges follows a veteran actor in his sixties, lost in the streets of Bastia before a performance, retracing a long-ago love. The Last Take is a Hollywood-set drama in which a golden-age movie star facing the end of his life must finally reckon with the one man he ever truly loved. Silig — co-directed by Filipino filmmakers Arvin Belarmino and Lomorpich Rithy — features the feisty Mamang, who returns to her hometown after 20 years to organize her own funeral on her own terms. Jaz, a wordless film, follows a middle-aged man deep in grief who encounters connection in the most unlikely of circumstances. Revenge spends a day in the life of Virginia, a 43-year-old transgender community health worker in Brazil — a portrait of exhaustion, meaning, and the fierce will to live. Rounding out the evening is The Ride, a Vancouver-made short in which two men on a late-night drive reflect on their journey through surrogacy.
June 16 — After Dark Strictly 18+ | Doors 6:30pm | Films 7pm
The festival’s adults-only evening arrives in June with a programme of films that push boundaries and explore queer desire and identity with unflinching honesty. Among them is Invincible Summer, a Belgian short from award-winning director Arnaud Dufeys, in which 16-year-old Clément — bored, restless, and determined to lose his virginity — finds his evening taking unexpected turns that ultimately teach him something about patience, bodies, and growing up.
July 21 — MQFF After Dark 19+ | Bracebridge Hall, 17A Manitoba Street, Bracebridge
The festival’s closing evening takes a special form — a 19+ After Dark event held at Bracebridge Hall, in partnership with Muskoka Pride, bringing the season to a fittingly festive close with films that couldn’t be screened in a standard theatre setting. The perfect finale to a remarkable summer of queer cinema.
The Muskoka Queer Film Festival is made possible through the generous support of Muskoka Pride, Sanctuary Studios, the District of Muskoka, and the Rene M. Caisse Memorial Theatre. Whether you catch one evening or all five, this is one of the most distinctive and meaningful cultural events in cottage country — and a reminder that great storytelling belongs everywhere, including right here in Muskoka.
Tickets: $15/show or $45 Festival Pass | mqff.ca