Florence Queer Festival: Opening Night

For our Opening Night – Wednesday, November 18, from 9:00 PM at Cinema La Compagnia – we have chosen to inaugurate this year's journey by uniting resistant gazes, urgent images, and critical analyses of the present.

The evening will begin with the screening of the short experimental documentary “A Message” (5’18”), created by Palestinian trans artist Mama Ganuush in collaboration with Lebanese artist Nasri Sayegh. A work that captures spontaneous protests and performances against pinkwashing, rejecting the narrative of tragedy to embrace "Palestinian Futurism": a space where those living in exile are the architects of a liberated political and cultural future.

Following this, the stage will host “WOKE! – against the new reactionary grammar,” a reading-performance that offers a public reflection on the themes of freedom, rights, and the cultural and political conflicts that traverse contemporary societies. A production by sherocco_festival, born from the multi-year research of Sara Garbagnoli and Massimo Prearo and with the complicity of Nicole De Leo, Porpora Marcasciano, and Vera Gheno, the performance deconstructs the narratives of the new reactionary grammar and restores historical and political depth to feminist, LGBTQIA+, and anti-racist struggles, inviting the audience to critically question the words, discourses, and power relations that shape the present.