AMOR LGBT+ International Film Festival
Santiago, Chile / June 29-July 4, 2021
Chile already had CINE MOVILH, the country’s first and largest queer film festival (its five-city simultaneous screening format makes it one of the largest on the continent), for a decade before AMOR came around. Inaugurated in 2016, “The Love Festival” distinguishes itself with its commitment to diversity and accessibility. In last year’s festival, AMOR boasted heavyweight Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante on the jury of its international competition, and the entire virtual festival was free to the public.
image + nation, Film Festival LGBTQueer Montreal
Montreal, Canada / TBD 2021
Quarantine did nothing to diminish the image + nation Film Festival’s unique ability to bring the Canadian LGBTQ community together through film. But after 33 years, image + nation is now much more than just a film festival. Through its non-profit wing, the Festival + program hosts (now virtual) events, shares unique, selfie-style filmmaker Q&As (called The Cinéastes), and encourages the submission and exhibition of ultra low-budget independent short films all year round.
San Francisco Transgender Film Festival
San Francisco, California / TBD 2021
Helmed by local punk legend Shawna Virago, San Francisco’s Transgender Film Festival has been on the cutting edge of the inclusion since its inaugural year, 1997. When other gay and lesbian film festivals wouldn’t hold space for trans, non-binary, or gender non-conforming artists, SFTFF created one. Having gone fully remote for last year’s edition in November, SFTFF once again achieved something many larger, better-funded festivals seemed unable to manage—providing closed captions for every feature, short, and doc in all seven of its programs, for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences watching at home.
Tunis, Tunisia / TBD 2021
Mawjoudin (Arabic for “we exist”) is the name of Tunisia’s fiercest pro-LGBTQ legal, political and cultural advocacy NGO, and it’s also the name they’ve lent to their most influential endeavor—the Mawjoudin Queer Film Festival. MQFF first took place three years ago in downtown Tunis, drawing over 400 guests at an inaugural event where only about 50 were anticipated. For last year’s festival in March, Mawjoudin carried on in-person (in an appropriately masked, socially distant fashion), screening roughly 30 independent films with a special emphasis on LGBTQ stories from the global south, to insist upon a vision of queer life in North Africa that is not shameful or criminal, but beautiful.
Cambridge, UK / TBD 2021
Modest but mighty, Out For Blood is a Cambridge-based LGBT film festival dedicated exclusively to the dark side of genre — horror! It may shockingly be the only film festival in the world to smash queer and horror together, despite there being such a hot audience for the pairing, given the number of popular and lately released books, films, documentaries, and TV programs that explore the intersection. In only its 3rd year, Out For Blood’s organizers had to winnow 157 submissions from 33 countries down to 21 films, programmed virtually over 4 days; if you’re a queer horror filmmaker, you ought to consider submitting to Out For Blood before it completely blows up.
Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival
Honolulu, Hawaii / July 31-August 12, 2021
Following in the fashion of its home state, the Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival has for 30 years acted as a cultural bridge, connecting queer stories from Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands to Mainland USA. This year HRFF celebrated the premiere of Kimi Howl Lee’s “Kama’aina,” a narrative short depicting queer homelessness in Hawaii that won top honors (the Adam Baran award) and the Rising Star award for lead actress Malia Kamalani Soon. Though the customary filmmaker and juror accommodations in the beach resort area of Waikiki were missed this year, HRFF’s parent organization, the Honolulu Gay and Lesbian Cultural Foundation, took the festival virtual in the most accessible way possible — by simply hosting every screening, panel, and talk-back on the HGLCF website, and all for free.
TILDE – Melbourne Trans and Gender Diverse Film Festival
Melbourne, Australia / Spring 2021
Melbourne’s inaugural edition of TILDE, though small, made waves for being one of the first film festivals on the international stage to centralize trans and gender diverse (an umbrella TILDE uses to honor intersex, two-spirit, and other non-cis communities) filmmakers. Since its glorious kickoff in 2014, TILDE has moved thrice into bigger venues, grown into as much of a community arts non-profit as it is a film festival, and this year in fact fully leaned into quarantine, by putting the festival on hiatus to focus on programming partnerships with queer arts collectives across the Melbourne metropolitan area. But fret not, TILDE is ramping up for its new edition this spring.
Taiwan International Queer Film Festival
Taipei City, Taiwan / TBD 2021
Taiwan’s pro-human rights political history has made it a haven for LGBTQ culture. It’s no surprise that one of the most voluminous, international queer film festivals in the world sprang up in its capitol city in 2014, and has been going strong ever since. 2020’s jam-packed Taiwan International Queer Film Festival spread a mix of socially distant in-person pop-ups and a rolling calendar of 60 virtual screenings over seven consecutive weekends in September and October, and organizers are already gearing up for 2021.
Merlinka International Queer Film Festival
Belgrade, Serbia; Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Podgorica, Montenegro / December 9-12, 2021
Named for Vjeran Miladinović Merlinka, a trans actress and sex worker from Croatia who was murdered in a brutal hate crime in 2003, the Merlinka International Queer Film Festival offers hope, visibility, and creative opportunity to queer people living in the Balkans. Merlinka took place masked, socially distant, and very much in-person in December in its home base of Belgrade, Serbia. But since 2014 it has expanded into the capitol cities of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo) and Montenegro (Podgorica), where abridged versions of the full festival play through this month. The submission deadline for the 2021 fest is Sept. 1, and given how much quarantine hurt indie filmmakers, films made as far back as 2019 are still eligible.
A still from Conversations With Atlas by Tierra Frost, a film from the Queer Women of Color Film Festival, courtesy of the festival.
Queer Women of Color Film Festival
San Francisco, California / June 11-13, 2021
Don’t be surprised, or upset, that two San Francisco-based queer film festivals get shout outs on this list—big tech may be rapidly gentrifying the Bay Area, but its queer, punk, and intersectional roots hold fast. A dazzling example of that holdover is the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, a robust collective of community leaders and industry professionals dedicated to breaking down the white, patriarchal, and capitalist walls around the film industry through an array of free programs for queer women of color, from filmmaking courses, to food assistance, to environmental justice seminars. QWOCMAP has presented the Queer Women of Color Film Festival for 17 years, and in 2020 screened roughly 30 films across a span of genres, all made by queer women of color, and all free to screen via individually distributed screener links. Those films include those made by queer women of color who are cisgender and transgender, and nonbinary, gender nonconforming, and transgender people of color of any orientation. Additionally, since 2014, all films screened at the festival have had Open Captions (subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing). The festival also offers additional accessibility, including ASL interpretation and CART/live open captions for all live remarks, panels and filmmaker Q&As.
Seoul, South Korea / June 17-20, 2021
The Korea Queer Film Festival, held in west Seoul’s Nogosan-Dong neighborhood each June to coincide with the even more abundant Korea Queer Culture Festival, was delayed last year due to COVID-19. The Culture Festival regularly draws crowds of up to 100,000 into the streets of Seoul, and without the ability to amass in such numbers this year, Koreans and international attendees alike flooded the KQFF’s streaming platform, Purplay, to take in the content. “Further, closer,” was the re-fashioned theme for 2020; 2021’s theme is yet to be announced, but submissions are underway through February 28.
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View Comments
While I am happy to see the celebration and attention brought to any and all LGBTQIA+ film festivals, I have to admit a little confusion as to why some festivals were left off this list as well as some curiosity as to what inspired the inclusion of others.
In fact, one of those film festivals included here was a client of mine – The Outstream Film Festival – and while it made a successful debut and was innovative in its approach, it will not be returning in 2021. So, yes, it deserved a nod for taking on the challenge of launching during a pandemic, but not as part of a list of fests to look forward to in 2021.
And yet, another client of mine, Atlanta’s stellar Out on Film continued its growth and upward arc for its 33rd edition that it has seen in the past few years leading up to 2020. That is despite the trend for so many regional film festivals which have been shaving days off their schedules, screens and films offered, etc., and certainly despite the challenges presented by the pandemic.
While it has long been a favorite destination film festival for years, Out on Film made that pivot to virtual without a beat. Out on Film Festival Director, Jim Farmer, said, "While we missed the live aspect of our festival including hosting filmmakers and patrons, the virtual component allowed us to reach an audience literally throughout the state of Georgia and in some cases throughout the country. It also gave us the opportunity to host three dozen conversations with filmmakers across the world. The virtual element will have to be a part of Out On Film moving forward." He added, “Our live conversations with Margaret Cho and Kevin Williamson were highlights as was our 40th anniversary drive-in screening of FAME which included conversations with Irene Cara and Paul McCrane.” Let’s list those names again, Margaret Cho, Kevin Williamson, Irene Cara, and Paul McCrane, and that was just from three events.
Out on Film also got the news last year that they had become an Oscar® qualifying film festival. So, with that head of steam, they presented 139 films and one drive-in screening in 2020. That included 35 Q&As from around the world, some pre-recorded, but most live. I could name other fests that deserve to be highlighted, like Inside Out, NewFest, and even Sidewalk’s Shout component that I would’ve included, but Atlanta’s Out on Film Fest is not only one of the longest running LGBTQIA+ film fests out there, but one that clearly hasn't been resting on its laurels either.