June’s Queer Thursdays selection features a breakthrough performance by Trace Lysette, a trans actor and activist who got her start in the New York underground ball culture scene. Monica is an intimate portrait of a woman who, for the first time in 20 years, returns home to the Midwest to take care of her ailing mother. Through the themes of abandonment, aging, rejection, acceptance and forgiveness, we get to know Monica and her world made of pain, fear but also courage. A journey through the needs and desires of a woman who opens a cognitive look at the human condition. “ a beautifully nuanced drama that feels unique and universal, featuring what will surely go down as one of the best performances of 2023.” – Peter Sobczinsky, RobertEbert.com

Promising new writer/director Jaime Sisley’s first film opened at the Berlin International Film Festival, sparking an instant buzz and winning the German Art House Cinema award. Not all festival winners get a U.S. distributor, but luckily it can now be screened right here at Hartford’s Premiere Art Cinema! Stay Awake is based on Sisley’s own childhood, looking back with both sadness and humor on an all-too-typical story that is rampant in small-town America. Teenage brothers Ethan (Wyatt Oleff) and Derek (Fin Argus) deal with their mother Michelle’s relapsing addiction to opioids in different ways. Derek feels bound to his Mom (played by This Is Us star Chrissy Metz) and helping her survive, while Ethan makes plans to leave the situation and his town behind. There are no monsters in Stay Awake – except maybe the drug companies – just a family trying to hold on to their hope and humanity. "This is what art does, it opens people's minds and hearts… and hopefully the fear goes away and then there's healing." – actor Chrissy Metz.

Amiro, an illiterate 11-year-old orphan living alone in an abandoned tanker in the Iranian port city of Abadan, survives by shining shoes, selling water, and diving for deposit bottles, while being bullied by both adults and competing older kids. But he finds solace by dreaming about departing cargo ships and airplanes and by running...seemingly to nowhere.

Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art wants to become more diverse and inclusive. But how to go about that? An honest look behind the scenes into the sometimes-fraught process taking place in many public institutions.

It’s 1988 in Margaret Thatcher’s United Kingdom. Jean, a closeted physical education teacher, is leading a double life. When a new student arrives, she threatens to expose Jean’s secret, pushing Jean to extreme lengths to hold onto her job and her integrity.

Four Black trans sex workers from New York and Georgia talk frankly about their experiences, raising questions about belonging and identity within the Black community. Their unapologetic and cutting analysis of Black culture and society vibrates with energy, sex, challenge, and hard-earned wisdom.

In this delightful and fresh coming-of-age story, Jamie is a chubby, clever gay fourteen year-old who is confused about his sexuality and uncomfortable in his own body. Then along comes Dan, the charming, beefy, bear boyfriend of Jamie’s cousin, who joins the family on a family camping trip. Dan rocks Jamie’s world and helps him understand that big guys can be sexy, too.

Aficionados of Wes Anderson, who gave us Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Fantastic Mr. Fox!, are to be rewarded with a new movie just in time for summer! Described at Cannes as a “comedy-science fiction-love story-drama,” Asteroid City is also a meditation on the meaning of life. It all begins in a Western desert town circa 1955, as the Junior Stargazer Convention invites five brainy student inventors and their parents for a scholastic competition. But with a in real life Alien sighting, the eclectic group is quarantined until the government sees fit. Anderson’s dazzling ensemble cast only begins with Jason Schwartzmann, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, Jeffrey Wright, Bryan Cranston and Margot Robbie. “On our confusing planet with random causes to despair, a shy child finding their first peer or an artist searching the cosmos for a connection, simply making contact is so much more than enough.” - Charles Bramesco, The Decider.com.