Frameline50 Announces Audience & Juried Awards and Affirms That Queer Art Is the Future of Independent Cinema
| Frameline announced the winners of the juried and Audience Awards at the 50th San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival (Frameline50). The world’s largest and longest-running queer film festival presented nearly 150 films from over 30 countries, brought 600 filmmakers and industry professionals from around the world to the Bay Area, and welcomed 50,000 attendees across its 11-day run. “Frameline50 proves the undeniable fact that queer film is the future of independent cinema,” said Allegra Madsen, Frameline’s Executive Director. “This is reflected by the record-breaking attendance of and unwavering support from our global community of industry professionals, filmmakers, and movie lovers. What’s unique about this festival is that our audience is our industry and always has been. The filmmakers, the distributors, the critics, and the fans are the same people, in the same rooms, arguing and debating and falling in love with each other’s work. Creating the circumstances for this collision is fundamental to what Frameline does. Movements coalesce around people bumping up against each other, generating friction, building something none of them could have built alone. Frameline50 was proof that queer community is still the most powerful creative infrastructure in independent film.” Since 1984, festival-goers have been responsible for selecting the Audience Awards for Best Narrative Feature and Best Documentary Feature. This year, Frameline is thrilled to announce that Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma received the Frameline50 Audience Award for Narrative Feature. The Frameline50 Closing Night film held its West Coast premiere at the Festival, with star Hannah Einbinder and writer-director Schoenbrun in attendance. Schoenbrun was also honored at the screening with the Frameline Queer Lens Award for Filmmaking for bringing their singular vision to the screen. Frameline is also delighted to share that Efraín Mojica & Rebecca Zweig’s Jaripeo received the Frameline50 Audience Award for Documentary Feature. A beautifully rendered work that pushes the boundaries of hybrid documentary filmmaking, Jaripeo also received a Frameline Completion Fund Grant ahead of its Sundance premiere earlier this year. Ahead of its penultimate festival screening — Give Me the Ball!, Liz Garbus and Elizabeth Wolff’s documentary about queer icon and tennis legend Billie Jean King — Frameline announced the winners of its juried awards. For decades, Frameline has presented the Outstanding First Narrative Feature Award to a narrative film as well as honors in the Outstanding Documentary Feature, Outstanding Narrative Short, and Outstanding Documentary Short categories. This year, the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC), which has served as the jury for Outstanding First Narrative Feature since 2020, presented the honor to two films after votes ended in a statistical tie between Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus , starring Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen, and Sam McConnell’s Test, starring the film’s screenwriter, Brock Yurich. Juried by industry experts, the Outstanding Documentary Feature Award was given to Brydie O’Connor’s debut feature Barbara Forever, which centers on pioneering lesbian filmmaker and visual poet Barbara Hammer. A recipient of the Frameline Completion Fund Grant, the stunning documentary will have a theatrical release with Strand Releasing this fall. Mickey & Richard, directed by Ryan A. White and A.P. Pickle, received an Honorable Mention from the jury. Juries also convened to recognize Morpheus & Charon (Morfeu e Caronte) by Luiz Ulian and Jocimar Dias Jr. with the Outstanding Narrative Short Award — with Shutterspeed, directed by Jasper De Maeseneer, and Yellow Bucket, directed by Simon Brooke receiving Honorable Mentions — and Doug + Me by Cecile Fountain-Jardim with the Outstanding Documentary Short Award — with Making It Fit, directed by Mariana Leal, and Oh Paulo, directed by Cam Archer receiving Honorable Mentions .“Across the board, Frameline50’s award-winning films — whether selected by our juries or our audience — reflect something vital about this moment in queer and independent filmmaking,” said Kate Bove, Frameline’s Associate Director of Programs. “Jaripeo, Barbara Forever, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Leviticus, Test — all of these features create beautiful friction in their own ways, either by reinventing form, upending expectations, or leveraging genres to make space for bold queer art. Whether reflecting our stories or histories, these films also propel us forward and, as inventive and subversive queer films always have, these works show us what’s possible and help us build a movement both on and off screen.” Prior to the Festival, Frameline announced that Emmy-winning actor, filmmaker, and playwright Colman Domingo (Sing Sing, Rustin, Euphoria) would receive the Variety Creative Conscience Award, which was presented to Domingo at a packed Castro Theatre on June 27 ahead of his conversation with Variety’s Jazz Tangcay. Additionally, Frameline previously announced the winner of the annual Out in the Silence Award. Generously underwritten by Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson, the award honors an outstanding film that highlights brave acts of LGBTQ+ visibility. This year’s recipient was Kai Stänicke’s Trial of Hein (Der Heimatlose), who received the award ahead of his screening on June 25 at The Castro Theatre. Additionally, in partnership with the Colin Higgins Foundation, Frameline awarded Colin Higgins Youth Filmmaker Grants to franny trinidad and Kelly Liu for Babaylan, Edward Nguyen for Sweat(Mồ Hôi) and Matthew Sorgie for So Be It. Ahead of the Festival’s Give Me the Ball! screening, the grantees were also recognized with awards. |
FRAMELINE50 AUDIENCE AWARD WINNERSAUDIENCE AWARD — NARRATIVE FEATURETeenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma DIR Jane Schoenbrun 2026 Canada/USA/UKA queer psychosexual slasher that stars Emmy-winning actors Hannah Einbinder (Hacks) and Gillian Anderson (The X-Files), Jane Schoenbrun’s latest film cements their place as one of queer and trans cinema’s most vital auteurs. In this riveting two-hander, Einbinder stars as Kris, a passionate writer who’s hired to reinvigorate their favorite horror movie franchise, Camp Miasma, after it suffers years of slapdash sequels and waning fandom.Distributed by MUBI, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma comes to theaters nationwide on August 7, 2026.AUDIENCE AWARD — DOCUMENTARY FEATURE JaripeoDIR Efraín Mojica & Rebecca Zweig 2026 Mexico/France/USAA journey to Michoacán’s hypermasculine rodeos descends into the subconscious of memory, queer desire, and longing, leading to a reckoning with the wounds and beauty of a home left behind in this beautifully rendered experimental documentary feature that also received a Frameline Completion Fund Grant earlier this year. |
FRAMELINE50 JURIED AWARD WINNERSOUTSTANDING FIRST NARRATIVE FEATURE — TIE Leviticus DIR Adrian Chiarella 2026 AustraliaTest DIR Sam McConnell 2026 USA Selected by the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC):”Two films impressed the SFBAFCC, San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle, jury so much that we’re honoring both this year. Adrian Chiarella’s intense directorial debut, Leviticus, floored the jury not only because of how confident and accomplished it was for a first feature, but how it complexly explored issues pertaining to internal and external homophobia through the guise of a horror film. Sam McConnell’s gritty sports-themed drama Test knocked us all out not only by its endearing, volcanic star-making turn from screenwriter Brock Yurich but for how it never once hit an inauthentic note in a searing portrayal of a closeted amateur bodybuilder trying to make his own mark and find connection with another man in the process. Congrats to both.”OUTSTANDING DOCUMENTARY FEATURE Barbara ForeverDIR Brydie O’Connor 2026 USADocumentary Feature JuryNico Opper, filmmaker, When I Write It, Try Harder!, and The F WordRowan McCandless, programmer at CinemaSF”A lot of the conversation at this year’s Festival revolved around the worry of what the years to come hold for independent film and the spaces that let it flourish. The life of Barbara Hammer (and Brydie O’Connor’s masterful celebration of it through her film) is an expansive embodiment of the power queer cinema has to combat these frequently overwhelming fears; her endlessly evolving dedication and love to the spaces, archiving, criticism, and art that lets us be stronger as a community.”Honorable Mention: Mickey & Richard, directed by Ryan A. White & A.P. Pickle OUTSTANDING NARRATIVE SHORTMorpheus & Charon (Morfeu e Caronte)DIR Luiz Ulian & Jocimar Dias Jr. 2026 Brazil Narrative Shorts Jury Lucas Drummond, star of Only Good ThingsFernando Andrés, writer/director of Rent Free |