Interview: Indigo Korres of SQIFF | Bethany Watt
All images by Tiu Makkonen (Instagram: @tiumakko)
This week marks the annual Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF). Held in Glasgow since 2015, the charity aims to make the film industry a more attainable career option for the LGBTQIA+ community. Bethany Watt spoke with the charity’s director, Indigo Korres, to discuss this year’s festival and the impact the SQIFF has had since she assumed her position.
I first asked Indigo about her beginning with SQIFF: “I wanted to study film for a long time and make films, so I went to Glasgow University, and the production course got canceled because of COVID, so I got more into film curation over filmmaking.
“That’s when I started working with SQIFF in 2019 as one of our videographers.
“In 2020, I worked in the access support team, and then in 2021, I became programme coordinator, which was a really fun way to get into the industry.
“In 2022, when our previous directors left, they offered me the director role, which was a lot to take in, but I was really excited to see how I could reshape the organisation.”
When asked to reflect on the impact she has had since becoming director, Indigo said: “Last year I turned SQIFF into a charity; before we were a nonprofit company.
“As a charity, we can access different funds and trusts that we can then use to support the queer community in Scotland and make it have more of a year-round structure.
“We have 9 trustees that support us to continue our work, and my role as a director is to make sure that we have all these projects in place, that we get funding for all of them, that we keep building on the work that we are doing.
“We want to pay more queer people to work at SQIFF and to work in the industry.”
One of her efforts to instill the charity’s “year-round” presence was the Transgenerational Tour around Scotland, bringing Trans films to the islands and more rural areas of the country. The tour not only acted as a conduit for queer film but also as as a way for people to connect: “There were a couple of trans people that didn't know each other in the islands, [and] they met through watching a trans film together at SQIFF.
“They were exchanging phone numbers after watching that film, and building that community is really special.
“So, it's not only about the films, but also about the people that you meet within the festival.
“And we always try to make sure that when we show films [about] trans people, that they're made by trans people.
“We just showed a film called NIÑXS with Take One Action Film Festival, a film made by a trans filmmaker about a young girl in Mexico which follows her life for seven years from when she was 8 to 15.
“And it was just such a beautiful film because it's not a film that shows any suffering.
“It's always about queer joy and trans joy, and that's what we try to focus on mostly, the joyous side of things.”
The charity aims to challenge the inequalities that restrict marginalised groups from accessing the arts industry. One way they are successfully fulfilling this is by incorporating extensive methods to make their festivals inclusive. SQIFF will only use a venue with gender-neutral toilets available, and there are staff members at every event who can be approached with any queries/assistance a guest may have or need. Indigo said, “We have been pioneers in accessibility in Scotland for film festivals.
“We have always shown films with descriptive subtitles; we always wanted to promote the festival to deaf and hard-of-hearing communities or marginalised communities.
“We have sliding scale ticketing from three pounds and a free option, we also have a travel access fund, so if anyone wants to come from anywhere in Scotland, they can use that to cover their transport if they can’t afford it.
“I feel like everyone who comes to SQIFF always says that they've never had an experience like that before, especially deaf and hard-of-hearing people or people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who can't really access the arts - it's great to be able to offer those things in an accessible way.
“And I think that's a way of getting people into the industry because even the filmmaking workshops that we did for trans and non-binary people this year, there aren't many opportunities out there for those groups, especially now with the current political landscape in the UK.”
This year there were six hundred applications for the festival, that is an increase of two hundred from last year. It is down to Indigo and two curators to watch every film application, vet them, and create a theme that flows throughout the entire festival week.
When asked how film can be used as a form of resistance, Indigo replied: “It can be used to resist, I mean, by bringing loads of trans people together to enjoy a film, that's a form of resistance in the current climate that we are living in.
“The government is trying not to make us be in public life, so it's important that we can come together and watch films together, and actually live our lives enjoying who we are.”
The Scottish Queer International Film Festival is running until Saturday, 1st November 2025, with a specially curated Halloween viewing on the 31st October. You can support SQIFF by donating “a tenner for our tenth anniversary” or joining their Pateron at: https://www.sqiff.org/donate/
About Bethany
She/her
Bethany Watt is Disobedient Magazine’s Current Affairs Editor. She has freelance experience with STV, the Royal Television Society, and the Scottish government. Her favourite subjects to cover include human interest stories, activism, and film. She’s always keen to hear new stories. You can contact her at bethanywatt90@gmail.com
