Founded in 2003 with the Centre LGBTQI+* in Nantes (Loire-Atlantique French department), CinéPride is a unique festival for its diversity, giving the opportunity to audiences to discover documentaries and long and short films on the topics of homosexuality and gender identity.

CinéPride is a six-day festival that took place in Nantes from June 14 through June 19, 2022. This event offers the public a selection of films from all around the world, often never seen in France. The program is unique, and it is a place for beautiful meetings with film talent as well as local associations that work all year long for the rights of LGBTI+ people.

For several years, the Ministry of Culture in France has had the mission of organizing festivals that can highlight works from the gay community, reaffirming its commitment to respect each and everyone regardless of gender or sex, its guiding principle the taking into account all populations in their representation and cultural diffusion, whatever their status or function, without any discrimination.

For this reason, the Ministry supports festivals that promote diversity and prevent discrimination against LGBT people. The 18th version took place at the Katorza cinema in Nantes with 12 features, four documentaries and 15 shorts.

A true cinematic journey through 16 countries!

June 14 was the opening night of the screening of Wes Hurley’s dramatic comedy Potato Dreams of America, an autobiographical dark comedy about a gay boy growing up in the Soviet Union. On June 15, Los Fuertes, a romantic drama by Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo had a screening. Also screened was a preview of Continental Drift by Lionel Baier, in his presence. On June 16, the festival showed the animated documentary Flee and the film Playdurizm directed by Gem Deger about a young gay community. On June 17, the Swedish documentary Always Amber was screened along with the sentimental drama, Down in Paris, in the presence of director Anthony Hickling and co-screenwriter Pierre Guiho. Raw! Uncut! Video!, a documentary about gay porn studio Palm Drive Video also had a screening.

On June 18, the Korean film A Distant Place, directed by Kun-Young Park, about a sheep farmer disturbed by the arrival of his lover and twin sister was shown, along with a British teenage romance, Sweetheart, and the American drama Two Eyes, directed by Travis Fine, about a trans teenager from Wyoming who works through his self-destructive feelings with his non-binary therapist. And finally, on June 19, audiences saw the following: a Polish biopic on the artist Daniel Rycharski; Le Petit Mal, a Colombian drama directed by Ruth Caudeli about three women living together; Finlandia, a Spanish drama by Horacio Alcalà about a community of muses untethered by the gender binary; Nelly & Nadine, a Swedish documentary on the story of two women through time and history; and finally, the closing night with an award ceremony for the public, followed by the screening of Joyland, a Pakistani drama written and directed by Saim Sadiq about the youngest son of a patriarchal family who secretly joins an erotic dance theatre and falls for an ambitious trans starlet.

As Cyrille Cadeau, programmer and coordinator, and Antoine Marquaille, co-organizer of this festival, quite rightly say, CinéPride is one of those essential events for the LGBTI+ community that are still far too rare in the entertainment industry.