The Q-Space queer culture festival was held in Tallinn

Q-Space brought together film lovers, Estonia's queer community and everyone interested in social issues in Tallinn for film screenings, discussions and meetings with filmmakers.

The actors of the French opening film “Lie with Me”, Julien de Saint-Jean and Jérémie Gillet, came to the opening of the festival on November 30 in Tallinn, and at the final screening on December 3, cult New York director Ira Sachs, the creator of the festival’s closing film "Passages", answered questions from Estonian director Peeter Rebane. 

All screenings took place at the Artis cinema. During the 4 days of the festival, Q-Space Festival Tallinn showed 12 films, held discussions on the topics of acceptance of transgender people in families, the situation of queer teachers and students in Estonian schools. After the documentary “No Straight Lines,” the creators of queer comics, as well as the film’s director, Vivien Kleiman, joined the festival via Zoom. They talked about the breakthrough in the perception of queer comics that has occurred in the United States over the past 20-30 years and the contribution that they themselves made to this process.

Q-Space translated the queer comics anthology How Much Queer Work into Estonian. This is a collection of a variety of stories about people of different genders, ages from a variety of countries from Croatia and Russia to Finland and the USA. (The collection of comics can be purchased, write to info@q-space.ee)

“We are glad that we were able to hold the first queer culture festival in Tallinn, Q-Space. A lot of people came to the festival, the audience liked both the films and the interactive events that we held. It is obvious that such events are very necessary in Estonia to connect people of different languages, genders and ages. We hope that for some people the festival has become an interesting cultural event, for others it has become support in accepting themselves and others, and for others it has become an entry into queer activism,” say festival organizers Gulya Sultanova and Manny de Guerre. “After a short rest, we will hold the Q-Space festival in Narva in February 2024.”