January 20, 2020. A young boy falls in love with a male classmate, just as political tensions escalate between the Sinhalese and Tamils in the years leading up to the 1983 uprisings.

In his brief, notorious life, David Wojnarowicz shook up the art world with explicit sexuality and raw dissections of toxic American culture. His powerful works earned the wrath of fundamentalist right-wingers in the years before his 1992 death from AIDS. Marion Scemama’s simmering portrait captures the serious, goofy, anguished, outraged, and horny sides of an essential artist and activist giving voice to unapologetic queerness at the end of the 20th century.

A deep, affectionate look at the life and work of five remarkable queer artists: the late, legendary filmmaker Barbara Hammer; the inimitable poet, Eileen Myles; Rasheedah Phillips & Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother) of the revelatory multimedia Black Quantum Futurism collective; and wildly innovative performance artist Jibz Cameron (aka Dynasty Handbag).

Ramin is a lost soul, an Iranian man who has escaped persecution and wound up in the Mexican port of Veracruz. Though he pines for a boyfriend he left behind, he is drawn to Guillermo, an inscrutable ex-con with a body full of bullet holes. A sensitive portrait of a gay man in exile, Fireflies shows us a world where borders can't always be crossed and our scars tell our stories.