London Fetish Film Festival 2026 at The Arzner LGBTQIA+ Cinema

London Fetish Film Festival steps into a new chapter

London Fetish Film Festival did not begin as a polished cultural event. It emerged out of absence, at a time when fetish, kink, BDSM, and explicit sexual expression were either sidelined or reduced to spectacle. From the beginning, the festival treated fetish as lived culture and serious cinema, not as provocation and not as something that needed justification. Over time, it built a committed audience by staying focused on that principle rather than softening its edges.

Now, as the festival enters its seventh edition, that clarity feels sharper rather than quieter. The 2026 programme does not mark a reinvention, but a shift in presence. London Fetish Film Festival no longer positions itself in opposition to the mainstream. It stands firmly on its own ground.

“For the lifestyle fetishists.For the curious and open-minded.”

This February, the festival runs from 19 to 22 February 2026, hosted entirely at The Arzner LGBTQIA+ Cinema in Bermondsey. As London’s only LGBTQIA+ cinema and cocktail bar, The Arzner is not a neutral venue temporarily adapted for queer work. It is a space built around it. For the first time, the festival’s full programme sits inside a permanent queer cultural home rather than moving between borrowed rooms. All events are strictly 18+.

The move reflects the festival’s wider evolution. What once functioned as an underground showcase now reads as a fully shaped cinematic statement. The 2026 edition is led by a female driven curatorial team, with Founding Artistic Director Venus Raven and Co Artistic Director and Producer Tainted Saint joined by co curators Lidia Ravviso and Paulita Pappel. Their approach avoids framing fetish as novelty or explanation. Instead, the programme treats it as a language capable of expressing care, fear, play, obsession, humour, vulnerability, and resistance.

The opening night sets this tone carefully. Rather than beginning with confrontation, the festival opens on Thursday with a fetish friendly fundraiser screening of Pillion, followed by a live Q&A. The film centres on devotion, submission, and emotional exposure, following a quiet character drawn into a relationship that reshapes his understanding of power and attachment. Half of the proceeds from the screening are donated to The Sussex Beacon, linking the festival’s first public moment to care, support, and community responsibility.

Friday evening shifts the energy without losing focus, with a screening of The Visitor by Bruce LaBruce, followed by a Q&A and afterparty in collaboration with HOWL Worldwide. The film reworks a familiar art cinema structure through explicit sexuality, migration, race, and class, using desire not as decoration but as disruption. Power is unsettled rather than reinforced, and intimacy becomes a political act rather than a private one.

“If you are going to make a film about sexual revolution, it makes sense to make it sexually explicit, prioritising practice over theory.”
Bruce LaBruce

Saturday is dedicated to short film programmes, split into two distinct sessions. One leans toward pleasure, humour, fantasy, and play, while the other moves into darker territory, exploring obsession, control, horror, and bodily risk. Together, the shorts show how fetish operates across forms, as intimacy with objects, ritualised power, digital desire, or a response to fear and isolation. Some films invite the viewer in. Others resist closeness. Many refuse explanation altogether.

Sunday turns toward documentary and archival work. These films explore Black kink communities, underground publishing histories, criminalised desire, and the psychological frameworks surrounding BDSM. They function as acts of preservation as much as storytelling, holding space for histories that are often consumed without context or erased entirely.

The festival closes with A Body to Live In, a feature documentary tracing the life and influence of Fakir Musafar. Drawing on extensive archival footage and contemporary voices, the film maps the emergence of body modification, queer ritual, performance art, and sexual philosophy from underground practice to wider visibility. It presents this history not as something complete, but as a lineage that continues.

Sponsors and collaborators

The 2026 edition of London Fetish Film Festival is supported by sponsors and collaborators drawn from across London’s queer and fetish communities. This year’s partners include BunkHaus London, Broke Boutique, Fetish Weekend London, Recon London, REGULATION, HOWL Worldwide, Chains Abound, LiquidVybes, and Queer Brewing.

Their involvement reflects the festival’s position at the intersection of cinema, community, nightlife, and queer sexual culture.

Full programme line up

Thursday 19 February 2026

Pillion, Fetish Friendly Fundraiser Screening and Q&A
7:00pm screening
9:00pm Q&A
Tickets £16

Opening night fundraiser screening of Pillion, a tender love story about devotion, submission, and emotional risk.
Fifty percent of proceeds are donated to The Sussex Beacon.

Friday 20 February 2026

The Visitor, Screening, Q&A and Afterparty
6:30pm screening
8:15pm Q&A
9:00pm afterparty
Tickets £15

Screening of The Visitor by Bruce LaBruce, followed by a Q&A and festival launch party in collaboration with HOWL Worldwide.

Saturday 21 February 2026

Shorts Session 1, Fun Fetish and Award Winners
4:00pm
Runtime 93 minutes
Tickets £12

Films:
Indulgent Delights
Lee in Leatherland
Darwin Fantasia
A Pacific Touch
Jacked Out
Klimax
My Perfect Dolly
Lupae x Hardwerk

Shorts Session 2, Kink Art and Fetish Horror
6:30pm
Runtime 149 minutes including interval
Tickets £15

Films:
The Nest
What If I Told You To
Squeegee
Fetish
The Debutante
Guro
Virgin X, Billionaires
Operotica, Stabat Mater
Virgin X, Splinters
Bath Bomb
Mutations of Desire
Woman ASMR
Virgin X, Shame
Dori Dori
Vanessa
Virgin X, Fuck Myself
Hyperion
Blood, Humanification
Thing
Moan

Sunday 22 February 2026

Documentaries
2:30pm
Runtime 83 minutes
Tickets £10

Films:
Sex in Colour, Kinky and Loving It
Mr. Bound and Gagged

Inside Fetish, Experimental Shorts
4:30pm
Runtime 92 minutes
Tickets £12

Films:
On the Erotics of Stuffing Large Objects Into Small Spaces
Ripples, Libra
Oasis
Breakfast Time
Sanguine
Babyblue
σάρξ (Sarx)
A.S.F.R. (alt.sex.fetish.robots.)
The Pleasure in Pain
Lasting Marks

A Body to Live In, Feature and Short Films
6:30pm
Runtime 122 minutes
Tickets £15

Short films:
Subspace
The Architect

Feature film:
A Body to Live In

Festival passes available
Three Day Festival Pass, Friday to Sunday
Saturday Day Pass
Sunday Day Pass

All screenings take place at The Arzner LGBTQIA+ Cinema.
All events are strictly 18+.

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