Montreal’s image+nation returns from 19 to 29 November with a lively mix of queer cinema, television previews and special events. Across venues around the city, the 39th edition moves from a First World War romance to queer horror, sports stories and emerging international filmmakers. Here’s what stands out in a programme built to make November feel a little warmer.

Essential Takeaways

  • A major Montreal event: The 39th image+nation festival runs from 19 to 29 November 2026.
  • A romantic opening: Lukas Dhont’s Les Braves (Coward) opens the festival, telling a queer love story amid the First World War.
  • TV gets a place on screen: Festival previews include the lesbian softball comedy Slo Pitch and Québécois series Dégage.
  • Horror with queer history: Frissons Queer, presented with Fantasia, pairs genre films and shorts, including Hellbent and Cruising.
  • A broad programme: The selection brings together Canadian stories, international first films, queer classics and themed short-film programmes.

A wartime romance opens the festival

A love story set against the violence of the First World War launches image+nation’s 2026 edition. Lukas Dhont’s Les Braves (Coward) follows queer desire in war-torn Belgium, with performances by Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne, whom the festival identifies as joint Cannes Best Actor winners. The official image+nation site describes the film as a story of love between a young man and a theatre-loving tailor.

That mix of tenderness and danger gives the opening film a striking starting point: romance, cabaret and defiance set against a brutal backdrop. The festival’s stated aim is to bring a wide range of queer stories and voices into view, and this year’s programme takes that idea across genres and countries.

Queer cinema history meets new voices

The festival looks back as well as ahead. Its Re:Vision Retro Queer series revisits Greta Schiller’s documentary Paris Was a Woman, which first opened image+nation in 1996. The film draws on interviews and home-video footage to explore queer women’s creative lives in pre-Second World War Paris.

Meanwhile, Nouvelle Voix / First Films turns the focus to emerging filmmakers, with titles including Sandulela Asanda’s Black Burns Fast, Victoria Linares Villegas’s Don’t Come Out and Kai Stänicke’s Trial of Hein. The programme also includes Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, giving new work and an influential earlier film space in the same conversation.

From softball to summer first love

Television previews add a lively screen-sized twist to the festival. Slo Pitch follows the Public Lass Brovaries, a lesbian beer-league softball team with a losing streak, while Dégage centres on childhood friends reconnecting during a Montreal summer. The latter gets a four-episode preview, followed by a Q&A with its creators and stars.

There’s a pleasing contrast between the two: one turns team sport into comedy, while the other explores the intensity of first love and unexpected intimacy. If you’re choosing a screening, the festival’s official film catalogue is a useful place to check programme details and ticket links, as listings and availability can change.

Queer horror brings the chills

Frissons Queer, a collaboration with Fantasia, puts queer horror and dark genre storytelling in the spotlight. The programme includes Hellbent, Cruising and Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders, alongside Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and a selection of short films.

The shorts widen the lens beyond horror, too. The official festival site groups them into themed programmes that include trans and non-binary stories, sapphic cinema, Indigenous and Indigiqueer perspectives, student films and local work. It’s a reminder that a short-film session can be a compact way to encounter very different voices and styles.

Canadian stories and local perspectives

Canadian films form another substantial strand, from Justin Ducharme’s Indigiqueer drama Seventeen to Labrador – Autopsy of Silence, I Come Home and Lunar Sway. Andrew Haigh’s A Long Winter also features in the official programme, alongside films from further afield and other genre offerings.

For a more local focus, Queerment Québec plans an evening of conversations at PHI on 23 November. The festival also features a historical drama based on the Jane Cumming case, a virtual-reality experience, and a documentary tribute to filmmaker Barbara Hammer. With screenings, conversations and programmes spanning so many moods, there’s more than one way to find your way into image+nation.

It’s a festival where queer stories can be tender, unsettling, funny or all three at once.

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