The Slovenian LGBT Film Festival, the oldest film festival concerned with LGBT+ sexualities, life, and art in Europe, has been an important instrument of political and cultural activism in the region. It is pivotal to contextualize its history and transformations in relation to state socialism and later democratic transition combined with a rampant increase of nationalist definitions of, and interventions in, sexuality, as well as a surge and transformations of the LGBT+ movement since the 1980s. The start of LGBT+ activism in 1980s was inseparably linked to a surge of Slovenian civil-society movements that have had a key role in subverting the political status quo through cultural activism and making queer bodies visible. Analysing the archives of Slovenian LGBT+ activism and interviews with Suzana Tratnik and Brane Mozetič, two long-time selectors of the Festival, the article focuses on the Slovenian LGBT Film Festival in relation to a unique configuration of political forces, state institutions, transition, contested meanings of the public and the Festival's visitors, as well as direct and subtle violence the Festival has had to deal with within its 36-year history. The article thus documents a marginalized history of transitions and reinventions of LGBT+ activism in Yugoslavia and Slovenia.