Sad Mag is proud to be counted among the Vancouver Queer Film Festival‘s community sponsors this year. With ninety films being screened at four major cinemas this year, the festival—now in its 22nd year—has grown to an impressive size. In a year of drastic cuts to government funding for the arts, a program of this  quality and diversity is to be admired.

The festival kicks off tonight and runs until August 22. Sad Mag has a pair of tickets to give away to the Friday, August 20 screening of Cheryl Dunye’s “The Owls.” To enter, copy and paste the following into Twitter:

RT to enter to win 2 tix to the @queerfilmfest’s screening of “The Owls” from @sadmag http://ow.ly/2oqE9

The contest is now closed. Congratulations to our winner, @onewetfoot!

From the program:

THE OWLS

Fri | Aug 20 | 5:00 | Granville 7 Theatre

“The Owls” reunites Guinevere Turner and VS Brodie, the leading actors of the lesbian cult hit “Go Fish.” This iconic queer cinema couple is cast alongside a slate of lesbian film mavericks, including Skyler Cooper, Deak Evgenikos and director Cheryl Dunye (“The Watermelon Woman”).

This film can boast being a truly experimental, collaboratively created thriller, murder mystery, dyke drama. Sound alluring, yet hard to picture? Imagine “Mulholland Drive” meets “I Know What You Did Last Summer” meets a lesbian feminist collective meeting, all set in the stark California deserts outside of Beverly Hills. Made by The Parliament Film Collective, co-founded by Dunye to help queer filmmakers produce exciting and original work, “The Owls” employs a hybrid of drama and auto-documentary filmmaking. The action hones in on four older dykes (Older Wiser Lesbians = Owls), who seem to have learned very little about healthy relationships and living drama-free. They are barely keeping it together while hiding a dark secret.

The Owls | Cheryl Dunye | USA | 2010 | 66 min