Mexican filmmaker Gabriel Gutiérrez Morales's film "Tijuana, Todavía" ("Still, Tijuana") is competing for the Queer Lion at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, telling the story of a queer Russian man who fled conscription and persecution to seek refuge in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. Produced on a shoestring €200,000 grant and made in just 10 months through the Biennale College – Cinema training programme, the film's makers say it arrives at a poignant moment, given both the plight of LGBTQ+ people fleeing Russia and the increasing politicisation of border narratives, as well as reports that Italy's culture ministry will not back the Queer Lion prize this year for the first time in its 20-year history.

The film follows Maksim, a young gay man who escaped Russia to avoid the draft for the war in Ukraine, and his relationship with Chava, an older gay man navigating northern Mexican machismo, played by producer Humberto Busto ("Amores Perros"). Director Gutiérrez Morales, who grew up in Tijuana, drew on a decade-long online friendship with a gay man from St Petersburg for inspiration, while the role of Maksim went to Petr Filimonov, a real-life Russian refugee who had been arrested for opposing the war and fled after his release, and who found the script closely mirrored his own experience. The production also featured the real Casa de Luz refugee shelter, whose founder reportedly had a personal story echoing the film's plot.