The scaffolding on North Bridge is finally down and I can see a 40-foot Black woman looking at me through the viewfinder of her camera. It is the advertisement for the exhibition Sandra George: Start from the Level at the City Art Centre. I pause in her giant gaze, a small subject in her line of sight, and offer mine back.

Despite relentless internet discourse on the necessity of sex scenes, kink is making a comeback in film – and I love to see it. As a queer creative, it excites me that filmmakers are taking risks with increased representations of ‘taboo’ sexuality.

Arcana is a poetic, music-led hero's quest by the French Cameroonian musician, performer, director and educator, Fay Guiffo. I see the theatre piece on the day it opens at the Assembly Roxy on Roxburgh Place. Outside, rainclouds ride low over the converted church. Inside, it’s dim. A few faint lights pick out a slim, still figure, who seems pressed down by the height of vaulted ceilings.

I cannot pinpoint when I started oscillating between anger and despair. Another racist attack in Scotland, another empty statement. Another precarious creative opportunity, another exhausting conversation with an institution. A cycle of feeling unsafe or unheard. As far-right violence became more normalised and the arts remained indifferent, I felt fewer pulses of hope. In the month preceding the Edinburgh Fringe, I flatlined into rage.

Takashi Miike's Visitor Q depicts the maximum level of breakdown in a family. This (very) dark comedy opens on a home video sex scene between father and daughter in a seedy motel, progressing through scenes of profound dysfunction as a mysterious visitor (Kazushi Watanabe) comes to stay with the family.

Haneul Lee responds to Falling: A Disabled Love Story by Aaron Pang, exploring the mainstream media’s obsession with disabled bodies and why disabled people get to be seen as “cute” but rarely “sexy.”

Elete N-F responds to How I Learned to Swim by Somebody Jones, embracing the darkness of water and its properties of healing and communality.

Anthony V. Capildeo responds to Precious Cargo, a story about the children affected by Operation Babylift during the Vietnam war, by Australian writer-performer Barton Williams (Huynh van Cuong) and Hebridean composer Andy Yearley (Nguyen Tang).

In this Response to Rat Tails (WIP) by Jeremy McClain, Eilidh Akilade details the journey of art criticism, from the inception of an idea in June, to the witnessing of an Edinburgh Fringe show, before the long bus ride home in August.

Katie Goh responds to A History of Fortune Cookies by Sean Wai Keung, looking back on previous iterations of the performer’s work and of her own writing to find value in repetition.

Xandra Sunglim Burns responds to Charlene Kaye’s show ‘Tiger Daughter or: How I Brought My Immigrant Mother Ultimate Shame’, on music, mothers, and breaking the generational curse of assimilation and propriety.

Theophina Gabriel responds to Alexandrina Hemsley’s Fountain, where a trio of dancers explore tidal cycles of repair, loss, joy and intimacy, expressed through movement and digital imagery.

Xandra Sunglim Burns responds to The Perfect Knight, a film by Stephané Alexandre that shows romance may come when you are least expecting it.

Shirine Shah responds to Flesh and Paper (1990), a lyrical exploration of the sense and sensibilities of Indian lesbian poet and writer, Suniti Namjoshi, directed by Pratibha Parmar.

Deborah Chu responds to Mourad Kourbaj’s striking tale of a family escaping the horrors of the Argentine dictatorship and 'La Junta Militar' in Una Muerte y Un Nacimiento//A Death and A Birth.

Nasim Rebecca Asl responds to Violeta & Sofia, a film by Noah Berhitu and Alejandra Rogghé Pérez on the power of food to maintain generational links to culture and place after migration.

Vrinda Jagota

Mohammedally Shushtari’s film Can Be beautifully shows all of the emotional complexities of two siblings, a brother and sister, Noura and Faiz, grappling with their father’s death. Each embodies conflicting emotional responses, clearly feeling misunderstood by the other. But, as each character learns to accept the other’s feelings, they map a path towards not only empathy for their sibling, but also a more holistic healing experience for themselves.

Hayley Wu (胡禧怡)

“It feels like there’s no good place to be these days,” my friend tells me over lunch. We are in a quiet corner of Hong Kong, thinking about the dozens of friends and acquaintances who in the past year have left the city, looking for a new home. From what we hear, no one has found one elsewhere yet.

Radha Patel

The opening scene of Cecilia Lim’s audiovisual poem, Pagpapa(-)alam: To Wish You Well, So You Know shows a care worker helping their elderly patient walk down a street. It is an image that feels hopeful; the future reflected in the present. Tenderly shot in Queens, New York, and captioned in three languages, Tagalog, Spanish and Bangla, the three and a half minutes that follow juxtaposes images of women from these communities cooking, caring and praying for each other.

Memuna Konteh

Journeying through dense forest into open fields, Mojereoma Ajayi-Egunjobi calls on Omolore, her mother’s mother who she never knew. She does not need a conversation partner, but a witness, an accomplice on a path paved with pain and promising freedom. Dear Omolore is testament to the power of poetry and film to distil otherwise indigestible emotions.