OPEN SPACE ARTS PRESENTS

CHICAGO — Open Space Arts presents its Best of the Fest Summer Streaming Series, a three-part online film program featuring nine bold and wide-ranging LGBTQ+ films from the United States, England, Brazil, Iran, and beyond.

Presented through Open Space Arts’ QUEER EXPRESSION film programming, the summer series includes a shorts program, a mid-length film program, and the feature documentary Finding Bernie. Together, the programs offer audiences the opportunity to experience new queer cinema from filmmakers exploring family, gender identity, desire, faith, memory, political struggle, incarceration, horror, humor, and resilience.

Tickets are $12 per program, and each program is available only during its listed streaming window.

Due to a technical issue that shortened the original viewing period, the Shorts Program and Mid-Length Program have both been extended through August 3.

“These are brand-new films, and that is part of the excitement,” said David G. Zak of Open Space Arts. “For just $12, audiences can discover new queer stories from around the world during these limited streaming windows. Best of the Fest is a way to celebrate these filmmakers now, while their work is fresh, urgent, and ready to be seen.

Tickets: $12

The Shorts Program brings together compact, powerful stories of queer identity, family history, imagination, danger, activism, and longing.

Directed by Hsu Chien
Brazil | 15 minutes

Inspired by real events, Bergamota is an LGBTQ+ thriller and slasher film that begins with the scent of bergamot—the name given to tangerines in southern Brazil—and unfolds into a night of seduction, sensual dancing, blood, and revenge. The internationally award-winning film brings a queer social-horror edge to the program.

Directed by Katie Fitzgerald
United States | 8 minutes

A documentary short about a family uncovering the story of Great Aunt Betty, who entered a convent in 1946 after growing up in an Irish Catholic family in Chicago. As Betty’s close friendship with a classmate helped her understand that she did not want the future expected of her, the film becomes a moving portrait of women’s agency, hidden histories, and the choices available to queer women in an earlier generation.

FIAT LUX 5000 

Directed by Daniel Eduvijes Carrera

United States | 13 minutes

Devoted gay son Manuel Espinoza tests an experimental brain-modulation device—the Fiat Lux 5000—in an attempt to reconnect with his father, who has dementia. What begins as an intimate act of care triggers the eruption of a violent family legacy.

Directed by Len Sanqui
United States | 5 minutes

This short documentary follows Zhi Kai Vanderford, a transgender Asian activist and artist who has been incarcerated for 37 years for murder. Told through his own art and words, and through the people fighting for his release, Free Zhi Kai is a compact and urgent portrait of art, survival, and advocacy.

Directed by Kristal Sotomayor
United States | 11 minutes

A curious trans mermaid defies her mother’s warnings and ventures to the surface, only to discover that the world above is not what she dreamed. This lyrical coming-of-age story explores environmental destruction, desire, colonial imagination, and the danger of being seen.

Directed by Mojtaba Darbandi
Iran | 14 minutes

A parallel story of two young gay men living within a traditional and rigid society. To protect their relationship and everything they hold dear, they must confront challenges created by the cultural structure around them as unwanted crises cast an ever-growing shadow over their lives.

Tickets: $12

The Mid-Length Program features two films that take more time to explore queer family-building, trans survival, and the political realities shaping LGBTQ+ lives.

Directed by Hallie Harper
United States | 20 minutes

Set against the shifting political environment in Texas, [Trans] Texan follows James and Evie, two trans individuals navigating daily life while reflecting on the implications of the current social and political landscape. The film offers an intimate look at resilience, identity, and the human impact of political hostility.

Directed by Emmalie El Fadli
England | 19 minutes

Alannah and Amara, a married couple in their early thirties, are ready to start a family. At a children’s birthday party, their enthusiasm for parenthood is met with blunt, funny, and sometimes alarming stories from friends who are already raising children.

Their journey through fertility options, known donors, failed attempts, emotional setbacks, and chosen family becomes a warm, comic, and honest portrait of queer parenthood.

Tickets: $12

Directed by Shon Keane
United States | 103 minutes

When their mother criticizes their painted fingernails, a nonbinary film professor confronts a lifelong struggle with gender identity. They set out on a journey to find Bernie, a gender-nonconforming childhood role model, while traveling with a multigenerational trans community and befriending a trans historian.

In Finding Bernie, past and present intertwine to reveal how personal identity is shaped by collective memory—and how, for many trans people, the personal is inherently political.

Button: BUY TICKETS: FINDING BERNIE

Shorts Program: July 8–August 3
Mid-Length Program: July 15–August 3
Finding Bernie: July 22–August 4

Tickets: $12 per program
Streaming: openspacearts.org

Each program is available only during its listed streaming window. Once a program closes, it will no longer be available to stream.

Open Space Arts is a Chicago-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to combating homophobia and transphobia through creative expression in theater, film, and community programming.

Its QUEER EXPRESSION Film Fest presents in-person screenings, streaming programs, and festival selections that amplify LGBTQ+ voices from Chicago and around the world.