TILDE: Trans and gender diverse film festival 2026

Trans-led international film festival Tilde celebrates turning 12. This year’s theme is “Young Blood,” because our blood carries our stories. In 2026, TILDE is getting out and about. We’re bringing TILDE closer to you, with screenings across Narrm, partnering with our favourite community spaces, venues and cinemas.

Our festival this year was named by our portrait artist Ash Spittal. We’ve been inspired by Ash, by our young radical filmmakers, those crafting deep-cut trans narratives, and the powerful collective artistry of FAMILI, whose lyrics speak truth to power: “My blood is a river that carries a song. My blood are the people that lifted me all the way up.”

Explore hope in queer nature, DIY trans horror auteurs, and slices of the everyday with us, as we give back to our little trans selves.

The festival will host eight sessions across six days to celebrate the work of established and emerging trans and gender diverse (TGD) artists. Tilde is proud to highlight the community that has emerged for audiences and TGD artists alike.

For a second year, TILDE proudly honours filmmaker Lilly Wachowski, who is the Festival’s Aunty (Patron). As a writer, director, mentor, and Executive Director, Lilly is spearheading a powerful wave of trans-authored storytelling. More than an icon, she has reshaped pop culture through films that reflect trans experiences and use world-building to spark public dialogue.

Continuing the collaborative tradition, opening night will feature a partnership with Sapphic Flicks at Footscray Community Arts Centre. A critical conversation between Sistergirls, Brotherboys, trans and gender expansive First Nations creatives in response to ‘Notes on Vanishing’ by Lily Alexandre. A night for trans truth telling, led by the First Storytellers.

On Sunday the 3rd, we’re bird watching. Join us and the Melbourne Queer Birders Collective for the world premiere of Canadian filmmaker May Matchim’s hopeful documentary Understanding Myself as an Amphibian. Celebrate how transness connects with Country, queer spaces, and the joy of nature, featuring giant squids, lesbian albatrosses, and green frogs. Bird with us, then head to Eclipse Cinema for the film and two shorts on whenua: Herekore (Hariata Wilson’s poetry) and Foreign Bodies (animation by UK director Lysander Wong). Director May Matchim will be in attendance.

We’re celebrating a new partnership with iconic queer space Pony Club Gym – to watch the hilarious coming-of-age hit of the decade, She’s the He. We promise you, this movie made us trans. Siobhan McCarthy’s trans-filled teen comedy not only delivers everything we love about ’90s high school cult classics (like She’s the Man), it also hits you right in the face like a game of trans-joy-dodgeball. Chill out this Sunday with DJs and a pre-feature short: the World Premiere of local filmmaker Josie Buden’s Under the Clocks.

For weekend two, we’re hitting the road. GAY24, BUFF & TILDE take over the Coburg drive in! Following hot on the heels of last year’s sold-out trans softcore TILDE session, GAY24 Film Club team up with the Brunswick Underground Film Festival to once again draw us into their squalid web with a selection of brand new voices from the international trans underground; presented on the big screen at the Coburg Drive-In Cinema.

Following a string of sold-out international screenings, the M. Sisters’ debut feature DIVINE HAMMER makes its much requested Australian premiere. In DIVINE HAMMER, two maladapted young women, both part of the same internet gore enthusiast community, formulate a plan to meet in person with the intent that one will kill the other, film the killing, and then sell the cameras that “watched” to unsuspecting customers online in the hopes of spurring on a “new era of death.” What happens when they meet up spirals out to become something beyond either of their cruelest expectations. Preceding DIVINE HAMMER will be the Naarm premiere of Aubrey Winslow’s short GUTTERCAT, in which a punk sapphic couple attempt to wipe away their drug debt in Adelaide’s seedy southern suburbs.

Finally, Saturday’s closing event is an Alice Maio Mackay Movie Marathon. From DIY punk horror to dreamy, hypnotic trans fairytales, Alice Maio Mackay is a fearless filmmaker taking on the world. Making her first feature at 16, she’s since collaborated with trans icons like Louise Weard (Castration Movie), Vera Drew (The People’s Joker), and Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow). This is the first-ever retrospective of Alice’s work. Grab a wristband, settle into comfy bean bags, and catch a single film or lose yourself in the full marathon. We’ve got free food, DJs, and more to be announced. Alice will be in attendance at the festival.