Saturday
October 3rd
2:30PM
Five Men Auditioning for Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion!
2026 | USA | 35 MIN w/ short film Kiloran Bay, and Mutual
Five Men Auditioning for Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion! began not with a script, but with an image: five men suspended in the liminal space of an audition room, waiting to be seen. An audition is a peculiar kind of theater—where certainty dissolves and the boundaries between who we are and who we might become grow unexpectedly thin.
Rather than treating the audition as a step toward the story, I became interested in the audition itself as a story in which the actors represent not only the characters they hope to play, but also reveal fragments of themselves.
Inspired by the emotional honesty of Terrence McNally's work, the film transforms the rituals of auditioning into a cinematic choreography of movement, gesture, and memory. The five men exist simultaneously as actors, auditionees, and echoes of McNally's original characters, occupying a space between reality and performance.
The film explores masculinity as fluid, relational, and deeply human. Through a narrative shaped as much by movement as dialogue, I wanted to create a film that invites audiences to consider not only the roles being performed, but also the people performing them—and the universal desire to be seen, understood, and remembered.
Toby Emert, MFA, PhD, is an award-winning theatre artist, filmmaker, and scholar whose work bridges creative practice and research. He serves as the Annie Louise Harrison Waterman Professor of Theatre and Co-Chair of the Department of Creative Arts at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, Georgia. His projects span film, theatre, and arts-based inquiry, often examining how narrative and performance shape human experience. He is especially interested in questions of queer masculinity, vulnerability, and memory.
October 3rd
Saturday
2:30PM
KILORAN BAY (Short Film)
2026 | UK | 13 MIN
Starring Alan Cumming and Jack Wolfe, Kiloran Bay is a 13-minute musical short set amid the wild beauty of the Scottish Hebrides and the fierce joy of a wedding cèilidh. A moving story of queer joy and self-acceptance, it follows a man returning to his hometown, where he faces the forces that drove him away.
The ensemble cast also stars Stuart Thompson, Giles Terera, David Fynn and David Hayman.
WRITER & DIRECTOR MICHAEL BRUCE
PRODUCERS DAVID HARWOOD, BETH LEVISON, REBECCA WOLFF
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS JUSTIN MIKITA, JESSE TYLER FERGUSON, DAWN BONDER, DANIEL CHALFEN, MARCI WISEMAN, JONATHAN COHEN, ERIC KUHN, DAVID THOMAS TAO, TREVOR BURGESS, JAMES COSTA, STEPHANIE HENSEN DITTMER, HARLENE FREEZER, HILARY WILLIAMS, STUART WILLIAMS
CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS BRYAN MCCAFFREY, MICHAEL SHERMAN
CO-PRODUCER TOM GENTLE
EDITOR GIORGIO GALLI BFE
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY IAN FORBES
PRODUCTION DESIGNER JENNY ALEXANDER
COSTUME DESIGNER LIBERTY BRAMALL
SOUND DESIGN DAVID MCAULAY
MUSIC & LYRICS BY MICHAEL BRUCE
CHOREOGRAPHER VICKI MANDERSON
CAST ALAN CUMMING, JACK WOLFE, STUART THOMPSON, GILES TERERA, DAVID FYNN, SAMMY HAYMAN, JACK MOONEY, NATHAN LUNDIE, DAVID HAYMAN
MUTUAL (Short Film)
2026 | AU | 13 min 50 sec
2:30PM
Saturday
October 3rd
An ambitious filmmaker lands a directing gig on the set of a historical series and must fight to prove himself. As tensions mount, his growing connection with the show's charismatic star blurs the lines between performance and reality.
Amid sabotage, grief and the relentless pressure of a collapsing production, he must decide whether success is worth sacrificing the people who believed in him. A darkly comedic queer industry drama, Mutual examines the cost of creative control, ambition and intimacy when art becomes war.
Director Biography - Jonathan Zsofi
Jonathan Zsofi is a multi-award-winning director and festival showrunner. With over 15 years of experience across feature films, television and short-form cinema, he is known for work spanning period drama, psychological thrillers and queer dark romance. His acclaimed House of Ancients historical trilogy has garnered more than 100 awards and official selections across the United States, Europe and Australasia.
Zsofi recently completed production on his debut feature, BRUTAL, and is currently developing his next slate of feature films.
For more than a decade, he has been the founder and lead showrunner of the global CINEVERSE festival network, helping launch and elevate the careers of thousands of filmmakers and screenwriters worldwide.
After completing a Master of Film and Television (Film Direction & Virtual Production) at the Victorian College of the Arts, Zsofi continues to develop internationally focused stories through his production banner, Cinéma Aurore Australe, guided by a simple philosophy:
Art unites us.
Director Statement
After spending fifteen years inside film and television and witnessing both the heights and the collapses, from my time working in film the Middle East to the final season of Australia's forty-year institution, the Soap 'Neighbours', I became fascinated by what happens when the machinery of storytelling starts eating itself. Mutual grew out of that.
I wanted to explore those invisible politics, the emotional labour, the compromises, and the strange intimacy that forms under pressure. It's a queer story, darkly comedic, but also a reflection of how the pursuit of success can deepen and sometimes destroy our capacity for connection. That's the heart of this film; the true cost of creation.
DIRECTOR Jonathan Zsofi
PRODUCERS Dominic Graves
WRITER Jack Stratton-Smith and Jonathan Zsofi
CAST Jack Stratton-Smith, Alex Lloyd, Jen Van Epps, Ashley Sawko, Ashley Sawko, Francois Theurel, Laura Lattuada, Jonathan Zsofi,
