Focus on Queer Chinese Cinema Brings Cult Classics and Longing to AGNSW

Queer Chinese-language cinema, with its aching glances and unspoken passion, has seldom been given the spotlight in Australia. This month, the Art Gallery of NSW changes that with Focus on Queer 中文 Cinema, bringing queer stories from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the broader diaspora to Sydney.

Running 13 September to 1 November, the program screens every Saturday and dives into queer experiences with intimacy, bite and cultural specificity across diverse expressions.

From tension-fuelled family dramas, to dreamlike fantasies and experimental works, these films wrestle with hidden desires, fraught conversations and quiet acts of resistance. They show how queerness takes shape not just in story, but through cinematic form and reality.

Icons, fantasia and tender romances at Focus on Queer 中文 Cinema

Spanning a decade of influential cinema, the line-up features icons at their best. Maggie Cheung dazzles in Green Snake, a psychedelic fantasia where she plays a shape-shifting seductress (and really, how could that not grab your attention already?).

Wong Kar-wai’s tender 90’s classic Happy Together returns to the big screen, alongside Alice Wu’s trailblazing lesbian rom-com Saving Face, showing on 35mm where it belongs.

The program also features a thrilling double bill of underground clubbing documentaries capturing Chinese nightlife as a space of survival and joy, while other films chart LGBTQIA+ narratives, political struggles and everything in between.

Together, it’s a sweeping snapshot of queer cinema across the Chinese-speaking world, one that demands these voices take centre stage.

Queerness speaks through every dialect 

Curated by the Chinese Independent Film Foundation with support from ACMI, the series highlights not just timeless themes but language itself. Across Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien and more, queerness emerges not only in what’s shown but in the living sound of language.

Yearning glances and moments of vulnerability speak volumes, proving Chinese-language cinema has long been a home for stories of love and defiance, even if often overlooked.

That focus is deliberate: queer Chinese-language cinema has almost never been gathered under one banner, especially outside Asia. By presenting these works side by side, the season creates space for reflection, recognition and connection—whether you’re seeing your own stories on screen or discovering underappreciated and layered storytelling.

For Sydney’s art lovers and cinephiles, it’s an exciting chance to experience cinema that’s playful, deeply personal and wholly mesmerising. Focus on Queer 中文 Cinema shows queer storytelling in Chinese-speaking contexts is as diverse as the languages it speaks, and just as vital.

Focus on Queer 中文 Cinema runs from 13 September to 1 November at the Art Gallery of NSW. For booking information, visit Art Gallery NSW.