Beijing — Queer Film Festival Cancelled After Police Pressure

Beijing, China — Organizers of the Beijing Queer film festival called off this year's edition on Thursday, saying weeks of pressure from police had made the event impossible to hold, according to The Guardian.

The festival, known as Love Queer Film Week, had been scheduled to open Friday in the Chinese capital. It is one of the country's oldest independent film festivals, founded in 2001 by students at Peking University, and had grown into the only public forum in mainland China dedicated to films and discussion of LGBTQ+ themes, the Guardian reported.

What did organizers say about the cancellation?

In a statement posted to Instagram late Thursday, organizers wrote: "We regret to inform you that the Love Queer Film Week … has been cancelled. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience and disappointment that the cancellation of this event may cause to those who planned to participate or had been looking forward to the film week," according to the Guardian's account of the post. The statement did not name the authorities involved or detail specific demands made to the festival.

Why was the festival shut down?

Police had increased pressure on the festival through repeated phone calls in recent weeks, the Guardian reported, citing information it had obtained about the run-up to the cancellation. The newspaper did not specify what was discussed in those calls or whether any formal order was issued to halt the event. The account amounts to what the Guardian described as "a campaign of sustained harassment from authorities," though the precise legal or administrative basis for that pressure was not disclosed in the organizers' statement or in the reporting.

What is the history of the Beijing Queer film festival?

Love Queer Film Week traces back more than two decades to a student-led initiative at one of China's most prominent universities. Over that span it became the country's primary platform for screening and discussing films that address LGBTQ+ experience, a space organizers and outside observers say had no direct equivalent elsewhere in mainland China, per the Guardian. The festival's longevity had made it something of an outlier: most independent cultural events addressing similar themes in China have faced far shorter operating lives before facing official scrutiny.

Is this part of a broader pattern in China?

Maya Wang, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, told the Guardian that the cancellation reflects a wider trend under President Xi Jinping. "The Chinese government under Xi has been relentlessly tightening social and ideological control, and so any activities outside of those sanctioned by the party-state are subjected to intensifying scrutiny," Wang said, according to the Guardian.

The Guardian reported that film festivals in China draw particular attention from authorities because they can platform narratives outside the Communist Party's preferred framing of social issues. Feminist and LGBTQ+ discussion forums specifically have faced what experts cited by the Guardian describe as growing intolerance from the state, even as such events continue to operate, often precariously, in other parts of the world.

Has this happened to other Chinese film festivals before?

The cancellation is not without precedent. Beijing Independent film festival, described by the Guardian as China's most prominent independent film festival, was shut down in 2014 after authorities detained its founders and cut off the electricity supply to its venue, according to the newspaper's reporting.

The pressure has also extended beyond China's borders. Last year, an independent Chinese film festival scheduled to take place in New York was cancelled after harassment from Chinese authorities, the Guardian reported, an episode that drew attention to concerns about transnational repression — the practice of governments pursuing critics, dissidents, or independent organizers who operate outside their own jurisdiction.

The Guardian's report did not include a response from Chinese police or government ministries to the specific allegations made by Love Queer Film Week organizers, nor did it indicate whether the festival plans to attempt a future edition. For now, the cancellation leaves Beijing, and mainland China more broadly, without the public screening forum that had operated, with interruptions, for a quarter century.