The Documentary Film Outlasting – Living Archives of Older Queers had its world premiere on 8 November 2025 at Batalha Centro de Cinema (Sala 2), as part of Queer Porto 11 – International Queer Film Festival.

Produced within Project TRACE – Tracing Queer Citizenship Over Time, Outlasting brings together the life stories of older LGBTQI+ people in Southern Europe, offering a powerful reflection on ageing, memory, resistance, and queer citizenship. Drawing on lived experiences from Portugal, Italy, Greece, Malta, and Slovenia, the film presents embodied memories as a living archive of sexual and gender diversity.

The film’s title — Outlasting — evokes the many meanings of endurance, persistence, and remaining. As the documentary makes clear, older LGBTQI+ people are those who persisted against all odds. When confronted with histories of stigma, silence, and exclusion, queer ageing bodies emerge as powerful reminders of the right to exist unashamed and unapologetic.

The screening was followed by a conversation with the audience, featuring the film’s co-directors Ana Cristina Santos and Nuno Barbosa, alongside members of the TRACE research team. The discussion reflected on the ethical, political, and methodological dimensions of documenting queer ageing and highlighted the importance of research-based audiovisual production in engaging diverse publics with queer studies and research.

The premiere was warmly received by festival audiences, marking an important moment for the dissemination of TRACE’s research beyond academia and into cultural spaces.

Outlasting – Living Archives of Older Queers was directed by Ana Cristina Santos and Nuno Barbosa and produced within Project TRACE – Tracing Queer Citizenship Over Time: Ageing, ageism and age-related LGBTI+ politics in Europe, funded by the European Research Council (ERC-2021-COG, TRACE, 101044915).