OUTFEST 2023

OUTFEST ANNOUNCES FULL LINEUP FOR OUTFEST LOS ANGELES 2023 LBGTQ+ FESTIVAL   

  

FEST TO AWARD MELISSA MCCARTHY AND BEN FALCONE WITH JAMES SCHAMUS ALLY AWARD ON CLOSING NIGHT, WELCOMES VICO ORTIZ AS KEYNOTE SPEAKER OF TRANS, NON-BINARY AND INTERSEX SUMMIT  

  

TICKETS AND PASSES WILL GO ON SALE ON FRIDAY, JUNE 23  

   

Today, Outfest — the Los Angeles-based nonprofit that uplifts queer and trans creators in the entertainment industry by providing career support and curating the exhibition and preservation of queer and transgender stories — announced the full line up for its 41st Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ+ Festival presented by Warner Bros. Discovery and Genesis Motor America, taking place July 13 - 23 in venues around Los Angeles and is headquartered at the Directors Guild of America in West Hollywood. Tickets and passes are available to Outfest members today, and the general public starting Friday, June 23rd.  

  

The festival also announced that it will be honoring Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone with the James Schamus Ally Award during the festival’s closing night in recognition of allies’ efforts to foster Queer and Trans moving images and to promote our communities’ stories to a broader audience. Additionally, McCarthy and Falcone are both executive producers on Relighting Candles: The Tim Sullivan Story, a short documentary directed by Zeb Newman and Michiel Thomas that will be featured at this year’s festival, about a West Hollywood candle shop owner who employs unhoused and newly sober individuals at his business.  

The 11-day festival will showcase a program of over 170 titles from more than 25 countries that includes narratives, documentaries, shorts and an episodic showcase. Highlights among the films featured include the world premiere of Truth Be Told, a feature doc directed by Emmy Award-winner Nneka Onuorah (Lizzo’s Watch Out For the Big Grrrls) and produced by MACRO (Judas and the Black Messiah) which gives a probing, heartfelt, and often humorous exploration of the relationship between the LGBTQ+ community and the Black church, featuring interviews with Billy Porter, Meagan Good, Cedric The Entertainer, David Mann, Tamela Mann and Kev on Stage; Acsexybility, a feature doc from Brazil by Daniel Gonçalves about the sexual lives and desires of people with disabilities, will also hold its world premiere at the fest, with Gonçalves attending; Fabian Stumm’s Berlinale title Bones and Names, an ensemble dramatic comedy about married men who seek new experiences outside their humdrum relationship, will hold its North American premiere with writer/director/star Stumm attending, and the U.S. premiere of Venice Film Festival highlight Le Favolose (The Fabulous Ones) will also take place.  

Outfest will hold its seventh annual Trans, Nonbinary, and Intersex Summit on Saturday, July 22nd which will welcome a keynote speech and drag performance from rising star Vico Ortiz who currently portrays non-binary pirate Jime on the wildly popular Max Original Series Our Flag Means Death; a showcase that highlights the TNBI community’s contribution to the art of drag featuring performances from Them Fatale Drag Kings and recent cast members of the AMC and Shudder hit The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula; and several commissioned one-minute films from TNBI filmmakers on the rise featuring TNBI talent from ActNow, LA’s LGBTQ+ Acting Class.   

  

Favorites from the 2023 festival circuit making their Los Angeles premieres with Outfest include Sundance titles Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project directed by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson (which took that fest’s U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Documentary) about the iconic Black activist and poet, Mutt directed by Vuk Lungulov-Klotz and starring Lio Mehiel and Cole Dolman, Sebastián Silva’s Rotting in the Sun starring the director and Jordan Firstman as versions of themselves on a drug-and-sex fueled journey in Mexico City, and It’s Only Life After All that takes an intimate look into the lives of one of the most iconic folk-rock bands in America - the Indigo Girls. SXSW premieres going to Outfest include a special screening of Julio Torres’ Problemista from A24 starring Torres and Tilda Swinton in the story of a Salvadoran toy designer in New York who must take a job with a wildly eccentric art collector when his visa renewal is in jeopardy; audience favorite Bottoms, starring Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri, directed by Emma Seligman (Shiva Baby) and written by Seligman and Sennott, in an uproarious high school comedy about two social outcasts who start a female fight club in a covert attempt to hook up with their cheerleader crushes, and Cora Bora directed by Hannah Pearl Utt and starring Megan Stalter, Jojo Gibbs, and Manny Jacinto. Tribeca Festival alum highlights include Asog, a heartfelt and hilarious blend of fiction and documentary about a struggling comedian’s journey across typhoon-affected areas of the Philippines to compete in the Ms. Gay Sicogan pageant; the film boasts Adam McKay, Alan Cumming, and Joel Kim Booster among its executive producers; and feature doc Break the Game, which took a Jury Special Mention in Tribeca this month.  

  

The festival’s popular Platinum section, which showcases the bold innovators and cutting-edge creators of experimental Queer and Trans film, music, and performance, will highlight Jennifer Reeder’s Perpetrator starring Kiah McKirnan, Alicia Silverstone, Chris Lowell and Melanie Liburd that follows an impulsive teenage girl living in a town where young women continue to go missing, Georden West’s Playland, the North American premiere of filmmaker Harvey Rabbit’s Captain Faggotron Saves the Universe, and horror film T Blockers by 18-year-old Australian trans filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay. The previously announced Platinum Centerpiece film My Animal will be followed by the Platinum Alchemy Party at 10DTLA on Saturday, July 15th with performances headlined by Outfest Platinum Alchemy award winner Madame Gandhi.  

  

Additional highlights include a new restoration of the 1996 New Queer Cinema classic Chocolate Babies directed by Stephen Winter, who will be attending the screening, and feature doc Commitment to Life directed by Jeffrey Schwarz which chronicles the response in Los Angeles to the AIDS crisis spearheaded by AIDS Project Los Angeles.  

  

The festival also has a robust slate of short films across 14 programs, highlighting the vibrant work by emerging filmmakers operating at an unfettered level of creativity and heralding promising new careers. Among the shorts are three world premiere works that resulted from Outfest’s 2022 collaboration with Concord Originals on a pitch contest in which three filmmakers were chosen to fashion a queer work around a key song from Concord’s vast catalog. Those shorts include Artificial by Chanelle Tyson, Avivar directed by Miles Lopez, and Skate directed by Zoë Hodge.  

  

In collaboration with Outfest Platinum Series, Fusion Multidisciplinary Artist-in-Residence Star Amerasu will premiere a visual poem, performance and The Subtle Power of the High Femme shorts program. Fusion Storytelling Artist-in-Residence Dalila Ali Rajah will host a Black Queer Joy community event and curation of the Soulful: Whimsy shorts program.  

  

“The depth of the talent and the boundless creativity we saw in the work we reviewed this year speaks to how wonderfully gifted LGBTQ+ artists are,” said Outfest’s Director of Programming Mike Dougherty. “One festival could not hope to contain all the fantastic films available from our community this year, but rest assured Outfest Los Angeles will be bursting with captivating cinema, and we hope to continue the celebration year-round.”  

  

This year Outfest is also partnering with FUTURE WITHOUT FEAR, an art and culture experience that explores the hopes and dreams of underrepresented communities as they navigate this moment in history. Developed by Los Angeles-based innovation and storytelling group THE WORK. FUTURE WITHOUT FEAR will be showcased as the key theme of the festival, including an in-person activation within the atrium of the Directors Guild of America.  

As previously announced the festival will open with Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, directed by Aitch Alberto, and will close with Chasing Chasing Amy, directed by Sav Rodgers. The Opening Night Gala will screen at the Orpheum Theatre, with the Closing Night Gala screening at The Montalbán Theatre. In addition, the festival will present as part of its centerpieces the films My Animal, Passages, Kokomo City, Fancy Dance, and Down Low. Outfest will also honor actor, producer and musician Amandla Stenberg with its Platinum Maverick Award, and the Platinum Alchemy Award to musician Madame Gandhi.  

  

Genesis Motor America and Warner Bros. Discovery are the presenting sponsors of Outfest LA. Additional sponsors include IMDb, Gilead Sciences, Comcast NBCUniversal, Hornitos, Sony Pictures, The Fight Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, ABC7 and On The Red Carpet, APLA Health, Bank of America, UTA, Amazon and Glamazon, and West One Music Group. West Hollywood Travel + Tourism Board is the Official Destination Partner of Outfest Los Angeles.

FULL LINEUP

GALAS

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Opening Night Gala)

Thu. July 13 at 7pm, The Orpheum | Dir. Aitch Alberto | USA | 96 min. | 2022

In this adaptation of Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s YA novel sensation, two Mexican-American teenage boys in El Paso, Texas develop an intimate friendship that blossoms into something more.

 

Chasing Chasing Amy (Closing Night Gala)

Sun. July 23 at 7pm, The Montalbán | Dir. Sav Rodgers | USA | 95 min. | 2023

Filmmaker Sav Rodgers investigates his personal obsession with the legacy of Chasing Amy, the indie darling that helped shape his gender transition and profoundly changed the trajectory of his life.

CENTERPIECES

Down Low (Late Night Spotlight)

Sat. July 15 at 9:45pm, DGA 1 | Dir. Rightor Doyle | USA | 90 min. | 2023

An outrageous comedy about one wild night, a deeply repressed man, the twink who gives him a happy ending, and all the lives they ruin along the way. 

Fancy Dance (U.S. Centerpiece)

Sat. July 15 at 7:15pm, DGA 1 | Dir. Erica Tremblay | USA | 90 min. | 2022

When her sister goes missing, a queer Native woman takes her teenage niece with her on a search for answers.

 

Kokomo City (Documentary Centerpiece)

Sun. July 16 at 7pm, DGA 1 | Dir. D. Smith | USA | 73 min. | 2022

Four Black trans sex workers — Koko, Daniella, Liyah, and Dominique — are unapologetically themselves as they detail their lives in D. Smith's multi-award winning feature debut.

 

My Animal (Platinum Centerpiece)

Sat. July 15 at 6:30pm, REDCAT | Dir. Jacqueline Castel | Canada | 100 min. | 2023

Otherworldly and alienated teenager Heather falls for Jonny, the alluring new girl in town, but as their relationship and desire deepens, will Heather be able to restrain the dark animal within or will their teenage lust have bloody consequences?

 

Passages (Special Centerpiece)

Thu. July 20 at 7:15pm, DGA 1 | Dir. Ira Sachs | France | 91 min. | 2023

In Ira Sachs’ latest, Franz Rogowski portrays an egomaniacal film director who thrusts his marriage to sensitive Martin (Ben Whishaw) into chaos when he enters into a surprising affair with a local Frenchwoman (Adèle Exarchopoulos).

NORTH AMERICAN NARRATIVE FEATURE FILMS

Big Boys

Sat. July 22 at 11am, DGA 1 | Dir. Corey Sherman | USA | 90 min. | 2022

In this charming coming-of-age comedy, a teenage boy experiences a sexual awakening when he falls for his cousin’s boyfriend on a camping trip.

 

Bottoms

Fri. July 21 at 7:30pm, DGA 1 | Dir. Emma Seligman | USA | 92 min. | 2022

BOTTOMS, a refreshingly outspoken raunchy comedy, follows two unpopular girls in their senior year who start a fight club to try to impress and hook up with cheerleaders. 

Cora Bora

Sun. July 16 at 4:15pm, DGA 1 | Dir. Hannah Pearl Utt | USA | 92 min. | 2022

Self-centered Cora (Megan Stalter) embarks upon a scorched-earth mission to save her long-distance relationship after suspecting her girlfriend may have found a new partner, to deeply messy results.

 

Egghead & Twinkie

Sun. July 21 at 5pm, DGA 2 | Dir. Sarah Kambe Holland | USA | 87 min. | 2023

With weeks to go before their first semesters at separate colleges, aspiring animator Twinkie enlists her best friend Egghead to steal her parents’ car and drive cross-country to finally meet her online crush IRL.

 

Mutt

Fri. July 14 at 7pm, DGA 1 | Dir. Vuk Lungulov-Klotz | USA | 87 min. | 2023

Over the course of one hectic day in New York City, a young trans guy named Feña navigates relationships of past, present, and future.

 

Rotting in the Sun

Fri. July 14 at 9:30pm, DGA 1 | Dir. Sebatián Silva | Mexico | 109 min. | 2022

In this self-reflexive dark comedy, director Sebastián Silva and influencer Jordan Firstman play fictionalized versions of themselves whose stories collide in a mystery marked by missing persons, graphic gay sex, and potent existentialism.

 

Something You Said Last Night

Sat. July 22 at 4:45pm, DGA 2 | Dir. Luis De Filippis | Canada, Switzerland | 96 min. | 2023

Struggling to make ends meet on her own, a twentysomething trans girl heads on vacation to a small beach town with her warm if abrasive Canadian-Italian family intent on making the most of their time together.

 

The Mattachine Family

Sat. July 22 at 1:30pm, DGA 1 | Dir. Andy Vallentine | USA |  99 min. | 2023

Thomas and Oscar are a couple very much in love, but after their first foster child returns to his birth mother, they find they have different ideas about what it means to make a family.

 

This Place

Fri. July 14 at 7:15pm, DGA 2 | Dir. V.T. Nayani | Canada | 87 min. | 2022

As two young women fall in love, each is forced to confront their family histories in unexpected ways, while navigating multiple legacies of grief, identity, and displacement.

INTERNATIONAL NARRATIVE FEATURE FILMS

All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White

Sat. July 15 at 7pm, DGA 2 | Dir. Babatunde Apalowo | Nigeria | 93 min. | 2023

Two men in Lagos, Nigeria are drawn into a powerful attraction that sends shockwaves through the disapproving society that surrounds them.

 

Almamula

Sun. July 16 at 11:30am, DGA 2 | Dir. Juan Sebastian Torales | Argentina, France, Italy | 95 min. | 2023

A young boy seeks refuge from homophobia in a mysterious forest, where reality blurs and secrets lurk.

 

Asog

Sun. July 16 at 2pm, DGA 2 | Dir. Seán Devlin | Philippines | 102 min. | 2023

All roads lead to the Ms. Gay Sicogan pageant, as Rey, a non-binary comedian, journeys through a province struggling to rebuild after a typhoon.

 

Bones and Names (Knochen und Namen) - NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

Thu. July 20 at 9:45pm, DGA 1 | Dir. Fabian Stumm | Germany | 104 min. | 2023

Long-time couple Boris and Jonathan test the boundaries of their all-too-routine relationship as they each embark on peculiar new creative pursuits.

 

Clashing Differences

Fri. July 21 at 7:30pm, DGA 2 | Dir. Merle Grimme | Germany | 73 min. | 2023

When a group of queer and BIPOC women are assembled by a white feminist organization in a half-baked gesture towards diversifying their upcoming conference, rebellion is in the air!

 

Opponent (Motståndaren)

Sat. July 22 at 9:45pm, DGA 2 | Dir. Milad Alami | Sweden | 118 min. | 2023

After fleeing their Tehran home due to a mysterious violent incident, a closeted professional wrestler seeks asylum in northern Sweden with his wife and children but struggles to outrun the ghosts of his past.

 

Peafowl

Sat. July 22 at 11am, DGA 2 | Dir. Byun Sung-bin | Korea | 115 min. | 2022

A Korean trans woman working as a dancer in Seoul returns to her family home, where she must grapple with her father’s death and the pressure to participate in a traditional, gendered memorial dance.

 

Pornomelancolía

Sun. July 16 at 9:30pm, DGA 1 | Dir. Manuel Abramovich | Argentina, France, Brazil, Mexico | 98 min. | 2022

Lalo, a porn actor on the rise, balances online fame with his constant sense of melancholy.

 

Silver Haze

Fri. July 21 at 9:45pm, DGA 2 | Dir. Sacha Polak | Netherlands, United Kingdom | 102 min. | 2023

Twenty-three-year-old nurse Franky finds first love in her working class East London borough, but emotional scars from a traumatic past and unexpected relationship woes make healing a tricky prospect.

 

The Fabulous Ones (Le Favolose) - U.S. PREMIERE

Sun. July 16 at 9:45pm, DGA 2 | Dir. Roberta Torre | Italy | 75 min. | 2022

In this intoxicating hybrid of documentary and fantasy, a group of middle-aged trans women discover a letter from their friend who’s been dead twenty years and buried under her dead name, and return to the house they once shared to hold a séance and fulfill her last wish.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILMS

1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture

Sat. July 22 at 4:15pm, DGA 1 | Dir. Sharon "Rocky" Roggio | USA | 92 min. | 2022

Uncover the shocking truth behind a scriptural mistranslation that ignited homophobia in the conservative church in 1946.

 

Acsexybility - WORLD PREMIERE

Sun. July 16 at 7:15pm, DGA 2 | Dir. Daniel Gonçalves | Brazil | 86 min. | 2023

Located at the intersection of disability and queerness, Daniel Gonçalves’ film crafts an embodied, sharply critical exploration of the fullness of its participants’ sexual lives.

 

Break the Game

Sat. July 15 at 4:45pm, DGA 2 | Dir. Jane M. Wagner | USA | 73 min. | 2023

Narcissus Wright livestreams every moment of her quest to be the world’s fastest Legend of Zelda player, but will she be able to choose love and adventure in the real world?

 

Coming Around

Sat. July 22 at 7:30pm, DGA 2 | Dir. Sandra Itäinen | USA | 75 min. | 2023

A queer Muslim woman grapples with the decision to come out to her devout, psychiatrist mother and ends up marrying her male partner to evade her mother’s silent disapproval.

 

Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project

Sat. July 15 at 12pm, DGA 2 | Dir. Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson | USA | 102 min. | 2023

A rich, complicated, aptly Afro-futuristic exploration of the work, life, and legacy of titanous poet Nikki Giovanni.

 

Hidden Master: The Legacy of George Platt Lynes

Sun. July 16 at 1:45pm, DGA 1 | Dir. Sam Shahid | USA | 96 min. | 2023

Discover the groundbreaking work of photographer George Platt Lynes, whose wildly successful early 20th century fashion portraiture of some of the era's most famous personalities paved the way for his true passion: the male nude.

 

It's Only Life After All

Sat. July 15 at 1:30pm, DGA 1 | Dir. Alexandria Bombach | USA | 124 min. | 2023

Music, activism, and unfiltered stories: The Indigo Girls' enduring legacy explored.

 

Queendom

Thu. July 20 at 7:30pm, DGA 2 | Dir. Agniia Galdanova, Maria Clara Sarem | USA, France | 98 min. | 2023

Gena, a queer artist from a small town in Russia, stages radical performances in public that become a new form of art and activism — and put her life in danger.

 

Truth Be Told - WORLD PREMIERE

Thu. July 20 at 5pm, DGA 1 | Dir. Nneka Onuorah | USA | 85 min. | 2023

A contemporary, hilariously emotional exploration of the Black church and the complicated relationship between Black queer Christians and their faith.

PLATINUM FEATURES

Anhell69

Sun. July 16 at 4:30pm, REDCAT | Dir. Theo Montoya | Colombia, Romania, France, Germany | 74 min. | 2022

A beautiful heart-wrenching film exploring the dreams, doubts, and fears of an annihilated generation torn about by drugs and suicide in a Columbian city defined by violence.

 

Captain Faggotron Saves The Universe - NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

Sun. July 16 at 6:45pm, REDCAT | Dir. Harvey Rabbit | Germany | 75 min. | 2022

A campy, comedy fantasy full of glitter and sass, about the tyranny of the closet and internalized homophobia.

 

Perpetrator

Fri. July 14 at 9:30pm, REDCAT | Dir. Jennifer Reeder | USA | 100 min. | 2023

Shortly after Jonny (Kiah McKirnan) is sent to live with her Aunt Hilde (Alicia Silverstone), several teen girls start to go missing at her new school. So Jonny tries to figure out what the hell's going on in this humorous, gory, queer-feminist coming-of-age film for the ages.

 

Playland

Fri. July 14 at 7pm, REDCAT | Dir. Georden West  | USA, United Kingdom | 72 min. | 2023

A haunting multimedia story that takes viewers on one last transgressive night out to the legendary Playland Café, Boston’s oldest gay bar established in 1937.

 

T Blockers

Sat. July 15 at 4pm, REDCAT | Dir. Alice Maio Mackay | Australia | 74 min. | 2022

When ancient parasites that thrive on hatred rise from beneath a small town, taking the most fearful and susceptible as hosts, a young struggling trans filmmaker finds herself the only one able to sense the infected, and rally the resistance before the horror escapes and spreads.

LEGACY

Chocolate Babies 

Sun. July 16 at 4:45pm, DGA 2 | Dir. Stephen Winter | USA | 83 min. | 1996

A queer activist group plots the kidnapping of a closeted New York councilman to challenge their city’s apathy to victims of AIDS. New Restoration by the UCLA Film & Television Archive in partnership with Outfest and Frameline.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Commitment to Life

Dir. Jeffrey Schwarz | USA | 115 min. | 2023

From Emmy Award-winning director Jeffrey Schwarz comes the true story of the fight against HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles — and how an intrepid group of people living with HIV/AIDS, doctors, movie stars, studio moguls and activists changed the course of the epidemic. Sponsored by APLA Health.

 

Problemista

Sat. July 22 at 6:45pm, DGA 1 | Dir. Julio Torres | USA | 104 min. | 2023

Aspiring toy designer Alejandro (Julio Torres) takes a job assisting an erratic New York art-world outcast (Tilda Swinton) in a desperate effort to stay in the U.S. before his work visa expires.

 

Studio One Forever

Partner Screening with Pauley Perrette and Project Angel Food

Tue. July 18 at 7:30pm, Harmony Gold | Dir. Marc Saltarelli | USA | 94 min. | 2023

More than just a disco, Studio One was a haven for gay men looking for identity in a world that saw them as outcasts, merging the gay community with the Hollywood elite for the first time, and becoming the staging ground for the LGBT rights movement and the fight against the AIDS crisis. Disco dance party following the screening!

 

Trans, Nonbinary, & Intersex Summit

Sat. July 22 at 2:15pm, DGA 2

Now in its seventh year, the TNBI Summit showcases and celebrates trans, non-binary, and intersex storytellers and talent, cultivates community, and facilitates dialogue. Join us for a day of rebellious abundance and unapologetic self-expression where TNBI voices take center stage, celebrating the power of storytelling and the resilience of our community!