Festival-goers in Nicosia have chosen the standout films from Queer Wave 2026, rewarding a tense psychological drama and an intimate asylum documentary. Across ten days at NiMAC, Cyprus’s LGBTQIA+ film festival brought more than 2,000 people together for international cinema, workshops, performances and late-night community energy.

Essential Takeaways

  • Audience favourites: Plainclothes won Best Narrative Feature, while A Song Without Home took Best Documentary Feature.
  • A global programme: The festival screened more than 50 Cyprus premieres from over 36 countries.
  • Six film awards: Shorts, animation and mid-length films also received audience recognition.
  • Beyond the cinema: Workshops, Q&As, installations, drag and DJ nights made the festival a wider cultural gathering.
  • A lively finale: The edition closed with a sing-along screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Nicosia audiences chose stories with real tension

The strongest signal from Queer Wave 2026 is that audiences wanted films that carry emotional and political weight, but still feel immediate and human. Carmen Emmi’s Plainclothes won Best Narrative Feature, bringing a Sundance-recognised thriller into the spotlight. Sundance describes the film as part of a new queer cinema interested in rawness, sensuality and emotional risk. [4]), [6]

Set in the 1990s, the film follows a closeted police officer ordered to lure and arrest men at a gay cruising spot. That setup gives the drama a claustrophobic charge, with desire, fear and institutional power pressed into the same tense spaces. It’s the sort of premise that can leave an audience sitting quietly through the credits. [4]), [7]

A documentary about belonging also struck a chord

The Best Documentary Feature award went to Rati Tsiteladze’s A Song Without Home. The film follows a Georgian trans woman seeking asylum in Austria, placing questions of identity and displacement against the practical uncertainty of finding safety in another country. [3], [5]

Its win gives the festival’s results a useful balance. Plainclothes turns queer history into a psychological thriller, while A Song Without Home stays close to lived experience. Together, the films suggest that Queer Wave audiences are drawn to both cinematic craft and stories that make distant political questions feel painfully personal. [3], [5]

Six audience awards showed the festival’s range

The awards weren’t limited to feature films. Mathieu Morei’s Yaoi Dumb Bitch won Best Mid-Length Film, while Mehdi Davachi’s Italiano was named Best Narrative Short. Thanasis Tsimpinis’s The Jezebels won Best Documentary Short, and Baz Sells’s stop-motion Two Black Boys in Paradise took Best Animated Short. [3]

That spread matters because short and experimental work often has fewer chances to reach broad audiences. Here, a film about family and queerness sat alongside stories of resistance, community, safer spaces and Black queer imagination. It made the festival feel less like a single-genre showcase and more like a lively map of contemporary queer filmmaking. [2], [3]

More than 2,000 people filled the ten-day programme

The seventh edition ran from 18 to 27 September at Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre, known as NiMAC. Organisers reported more than 2,000 attendees, with over 50 Cyprus premieres from filmmakers across more than 36 countries, including Thailand, South Africa, Iraq, Ecuador, Georgia, Brazil and Croatia. [1], [2]

The programme also included Cannes-winning The Little Sister, Cyprus co-production Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day, Harry Lighton’s Pillion and a centenary screening of the Swedish silent film The Girl in Tails. Ending with a sing-along Rocky Horror Picture Show screening was a suitably camp flourish after ten days of serious conversations and difficult stories. [1], [2]

Workshops and nightlife turned screenings into community

Queer Wave’s appeal extended well beyond the auditorium. The festival hosted sessions on queer solidarity across borders, creative writing, queer horror and trans community issues, including a writing workshop led by BAFTA-winning author and screenwriter Dean Atta. [1], [2]

Filmmaker Q&As added a face-to-face dimension, with guests including Sam Ashby, Flora Woudstra Hablé and Tsimpinis. Meanwhile, audiovisual installations honoured Paola Revenioti and Andreas Karayian, while drag, waacking and DJ events brought a louder, sweatier energy to the evenings. It’s a reminder that a queer film festival isn’t only somewhere to watch stories. It’s also somewhere to meet people who understand why those stories matter. [1], [2]

Queer Wave’s next chapter will have a strong foundation: a growing audience, international reach and a programme willing to move from intimate testimony to gleaming midnight spectacle.

Explore the winning films and the wider programme if you’re looking for queer cinema with both bite and heart.

Source Reference Map

Story idea inspired by: [1]

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