Following the resounding success of the film version of her brilliant novel, Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters’s newest adventure is just as riveting. It is the story of two very different women: Sue, a fingersmith (Victorian slang for pickpocket), lives independently and survives by her wits. Maud, plucked from a women’s prison to live a life of privilege and sophistication, leads a sheltered life under the ever-watchful eye of her uncle. The two women meet, not by chance, but as the result of a cleverly devised plot to swindle Maud out of her inheritance. Nothing, however, is what it seems as the two women tell their sides of a story filled with betrayal and courage. Description adapted from the Reel Affirmations Film Festival.

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With a hefty dose of Almodovar and the flamboyance of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, director Ramón Salazar’s 20 Centimeters tells the story of Marieta (Mónica Cervera) a narcoleptic transsexual hooker who longs to get rid of the 20 centimeters that separate her from becoming the glamorous woman she longs to be. Though her day-to-day life is rough and wanting, Marieta’s dreams are where she comes alive in full-scale musical numbers. Salazar’s combination of intense drama with musical interludes creates a “wonderfully twisted” film that will haunt you for quite some time.

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Telling two distinctly different but related stories, sophomore filmmaker Richard Bell (Two Brothers) has crafted an accomplished drama about forgiveness, love, and a tragic family. Pip is a street kid who is meeting life head-on in the big city. On his eighteenth birthday, he receives his grandfather’s WWII memoirs on cassette, a gift that awakens the ghost of the past. His grandfather relates the story of the day he turned eighteen, fleeing German forces through the woods of France. In Pip’s own contemporary way, he begins to live the parallel life of his grandfather, each man lost in his own world and generation. Bell has assembled an outstanding cast of actors with queer credentials including Thea Gill (Queer as Folk), Sir Ian McKellen, Alan Cumming, and Canadian actor Brendan Fletcher (The Five Senses).

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