By Jonathan Obi
Desire Lines directed by Jules Rosskam is the winner of the RBC Narrative Change Award at the 2024 Vancouver Queer Film Festival (VQFF). The Gerry Brunet Memorial Award: Best British Columbia Short prize went to directors David Ng and Jen Sungshine for Drag Is For Everyone.
Jules Rosskam’s “Desire Lines” is a liberating exploration of transmasculine sexuality that blends narrative and documentary forms.
The jurors said in a statement: “In the face of cultural and industrial pressures to tell expansive and marketable stories, queer and trans audiences are worthy of films that affirm and celebrate the intricacies of our intersectional identities, we deserve the films that reveal the multiple layers and revel in the prismatic light that defines our queerness. For its fearless ethics of and commitment to risk-taking – aesthetically, formally, thematically, and culturally – and for the depths of trans and queer sexuality that it artfully explores, we present Desire Lines from director Jules Rosskam with the RBC Narrative Change Award.”
This year’s VQFF’s annual prize for the Festival’s best BC short film, the Gerry Brunet Memorial Award: Best British Columbia Short, was determined by audience vote and went to Drag is for Everyone by Ng and Sungshine who previously won the Gerry Brunet Memorial Award in 2019 for Yellow Peril: Queer Destiny.
The 2024 People’s Choice Awards winners are:
The Canadian Feature winner is A Mother Apart directed by Laurie Townshend.
“What an honor it is to be the “People’s Choice”. A Mother Apart is as much a film about one inspirational mother figure as it is about all those who mother or have been mothered. It’s a film about all of us—and our capacity for grace and for healing in the face of wounding.” – Laurie Townshend, Director
