The trans-led international film festival, TILDE, celebrates the work of established and emerging trans and gender-diverse (TGD) artists with two weekends of trans-authored cinema in Melbourne.

Running from Friday, May 1 to Saturday, May 9, TILDE will screen over two weekends across Narrm, partnering with our community spaces, venues and cinemas.

“As trans people around the world face relentless attacks on their rights and dignity, celebrating and connecting with trans artists who dare to imagine new worlds matters more than ever,” said TILDE CEO Ro Bright.

“We’re thrilled to expand TILDE to other parts of Naarm to fully take over and celebrate trans filmmakers.”

“Taking over the Coburg Drive In has been a collective dream, so we’re so excited to make it happen in collaboration with GAY24 and Brunswick Underground Film Festival.”

TILDE proudly highlights the community that has emerged for audiences and TGD artists alike.

The festival will host eight sessions across six days to “give back to our little trans selves” with tickets priced between $10 and $15.

Films will explore hope in queer nature, DIY trans horror auteurs, and slices of the everyday.

TILDE turns 12 and again honours Lilly Wachowski

TILDE will honour Festival’s Aunty (Patron), filmmaker Lilly Wachowski, for a second year.

‘As a writer, director, mentor, and Executive Director, Lilly is spearheading a powerful wave of trans-authored storytelling.” TILDE said.

“More than an icon, she has reshaped pop culture through films that reflect trans experiences and use world-building to spark public dialogue.”

The theme of Tilde this year is Young Blood, because our blood carries our stories, and was named by portrait artist Ash Spittal.

The TILDE press release said the festival was “inspired by Ash, by our young radical filmmakers, those crafting deep-cut trans narratives, and the powerful collective artistry of FAMILI, whose lyrics speak truth to power.”

“My blood is a river that carries a song. My blood are the people that lifted me all the way up.” 

TILDE features a host of local and international works redefining and amplifying trans and gender-diverse storytelling.

“Investing in local emerging filmmakers is central to our work,” Bright said.

“The Our Future session showcases trans and gender-expansive filmmakers from Naarm and across the country who are confronting and reshaping culture through their art.

“Their stories don’t just reflect the world – they reimagine it.”

Collaboration is at the heart of TILDE

Opening night on Friday, May 1, features a partnership with Sapphic Flicks at Footscray Community Arts Centre.

A night for trans truth-telling, led by the First Storytellers, and a critical conversation between Sistergirls, Brotherboys, trans and gender expansive First Nations creatives.

The conversation will be in response to ‘Notes on Vanishing’ by Lily Alexandre.

Saturday, May 2, will feature the third edition of OUR FUTURE, in partnership with Fed Square featuring trans-authored shorts.

Expect fruity-ness, satanic rituals, pregnancy tests from voices shaping the future of cinema,

Be sure to stick around and hear from the filmmakers in person at the TILDE Q&A.

On Sunday, May 3, join the Melbourne Queer Birders Collective for the world premiere of Canadian filmmaker May Matchim’s hopeful documentary Understanding Myself as an Amphibian.

While the session is sold out, you can still add your name to the waitlist and keep your fingers crossed.

Images: Supplied

Celebrate how transness connects with Country, queer spaces, and the joy of nature, featuring giant squids, lesbian albatrosses, and green frogs.

Bird with us, then head to Eclipse Cinema for the film and two shorts on whenua, Herekore (Hariata Wilson’s poetry) and Foreign Bodies (animation by UK director Lysander Wong).

Director May Matchim will be in attendance.

Iconic queer space Pony Club Gym will screen the hilarious coming-of-age hit of the decade, She’s the He.

Siobhan McCarthy’s trans-filled teen comedy not only delivers everything we love about ’90s high school cult classics and hits you right in the face like a game of trans-joy-dodgeball.

While the session is sold out, you can still add your name to the waitlist and keep your fingers crossed.

Chill out this Sunday with DJs and a pre-feature short World Premiere of local filmmaker Josie Buden’s Under the Clocks.

For weekend two, TILDE are hitting the road

Following last year’s sold-out trans softcore TILDE session, GAY24 Film Club are teaming up with the Brunswick Underground Film Festival.

See a selection of brand new voices from the international trans underground, presented on the big screen at the Coburg Drive-In Cinema.

Following a string of sold-out international screenings, the M. Sisters’ debut feature DIVINE HAMMER makes its much-requested Australian premiere.

Two women, both part of the same internet gore enthusiast community, formulate a plan to meet in person where one will kill the other, film the killing, and then sell the cameras that watch to unsuspecting customers online.

The hope is that it will spur a new era of death, but what happens when something beyond their cruellest expectations spirals?

Divine Hammer by the M. Sisters
Image: Supplied

The screening will also feature the Naarm premiere of Aubrey Winslow’s short GUTTERCAT.

Where a punk sapphic couple attempt to wipe away their drug debt in Adelaide’s seedy southern suburbs. 

Saturday’s closing event is an Alice Maio Mackay Movie Marathon, the first-ever retrospective of Alice’s work

From DIY punk horror to dreamy, hypnotic trans fairytales, Alice Maio Mackay is a fearless filmmaker taking on the world.

Making her first feature at 16, she’s since collaborated with trans icons like Louise Weard (Castration Movie), Vera Drew (The People’s Joker), and Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow).

Grab a wristband, settle into comfy bean bags, catch a single film or lose yourself in the full marathon.

Click here to grab your tickets and see the full TILDE 2026 program.

CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS – Alice Maio Mackay
Image: Supplied

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