Regent Releasing films Patrick, Age 1.5 and Little Ashes are set to bookend the 11th annual Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.

The 10-day festival gets going on Friday, April 24 with Director Ella Lemhagen's Patrick, Age 1.5. The dramedy begins with joyous gay couple Sven and Goran thriving in the suburbs of Sweden, daydreaming about starting their own family. A dream plagued by disappointing setbacks. So the men are delighted with the news that a baby boy, Patrick, will be placed in their care. But Patrick is not 1.5 as the agency described, but a 15-year-old homophobic teen with a criminal record. Anticipate laughter and perhaps a couple of tears as we glimpse into the lives of a contemporary gay couple.

Also being screened at the fest will be Canadian director John Greyson's Fig Trees. The film popped up at the Berlin International Film Festival in February where it won a Teddy Award for Best Documentary/Essay film.

Greyson's Fig Trees is an experimental film that documents the struggle for AIDS patients in South Africa to gain needed access to treatment. The film blends actual footage of AIDS activist Zackie Achmat's 1999 treatment strike, where he refused medicine until it became available to all in his country, with singing actors against a backdrop of an opera. It is narrated by a squirrel that is an albino.

In Suddenly, Last Winter we find out that the homophobic despot of Italy is the Vatican.

It is filmed by Roman couple Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi, whose domestic bliss had largely insulated them from the deep rooted anti-gay attitudes of their countrymen. But the “shock and awe” response from church leaders and right-wing organizations to a proposed gay civil unions bill in the winter of 2007 leaves the couple shell-shocked.

The setting is Italy, but the narrative is eerily similar to California summer of 2008, making Suddenly, Last Winter a very interesting look at the universal thinking of gay marriage foes.

And closing the festival on Sunday, May 3 will be the U.S. premiere of Director Paul Morrisson's highly anticipated Little Ashes.

Biases are challenged in Little Ashes, including the love shared between two men as Spain broils in social unrest. In 1922, eccentric painter Salvador Dali (Robert Pattinson, Twilight) arrives at university where he befriends poet Federico Garcia Lorca (Javier Beltran) and artist Luis Bunuel. As Salvador and Federico draw closer, the pair struggle to reconcile their artistic ambitions, societal obligations and growing love for one another.

Little Ashes arrives in arthouse venues on May 8.

Gay Entertainment Report is a feature of On Top Magazine and can be reached at ontopmag@ontopmag.com.

On the Net: The Miami Gay & Lesbian Festival site is at www.mglff.com/2009.