Zuri Pryor-Graves
Aug 29
7 mins read
Out On Film returns Sept. 24-Oct. 4 with 155 films, a strong slate of Black queer work and a Rising Star Award for Jelani Alladin.
Out On Film’s 39th festival gives Black queer audiences plenty to choose from, with romance, Atlanta history, Southern music and fashion, international stories and new work from artists including Jelani Alladin and Punkie Johnson.
The 11-day festival runs Sept. 24-Oct. 4 at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema with 155 films: 38 features, 108 shorts, five episodics, three music videos and one upcoming television episode. There are 10 world premieres, five international premieres, 11 U.S. premieres and more than 20 regional premieres, making 2026 the festival’s largest edition yet.
Out On Film is Oscar-qualifying, and its reach has grown well beyond Atlanta. “Two People Exchanging Saliva,” which qualified for Academy Award consideration through the festival in 2025, was nominated for the 2026 Oscar for best live-action short film. Last year, more than 17,000 people attended in person or online, with virtual viewers in 254 cities across 13 countries.
Actor, singer and director Jelani Alladin will receive the 2026 Rising Star Award. His short film “Next Year” will also have its world premiere at the festival.
Alladin starred as Marcus Gaines in Showtime’s “Fellow Travelers,” appeared in “tick, tick … BOOM!” and made his Broadway debut as Kristoff in “Frozen,” earning Drama Desk and Drama League nominations. He also played Hercules at the Public Theater’s Delacorte Theater.
In a 2024 essay, Alladin wrote about embracing his Black skin, West Indian heritage, and queerness as part of his artistic identity.
Watch the Trailer Below:
High on our list is “Black Burns Fast,” the feature debut from South African filmmaker Sandulela Asanda.
Luthando is a bookish 17-year-old scholarship student at an elite all-girls boarding school who would rather stay unnoticed. Then Ayanda arrives, confident, magnetic and very difficult to ignore. Their secret romance pushes Luthando to confront her sexuality, her identity and the expectations surrounding her.
Asanda has described the film as part of a Black experience that is queer, joyful and dynamic. Their short “Mirror Mirror” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, screened in Berlinale Generation and won best South African short at the 2023 Durban International Film Festival. “Black Burns Fast” later screened at the 2026 Berlinale and closed BFI Flare in London.
Watch the Trailer for ‘Black Burns Fast’ Below:
Writer-director Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor’s “Dreamers” follows two Black women who meet inside a British immigration detention center.
Isio, a Nigerian migrant seeking asylum in the United Kingdom, is detained after living there undocumented. She meets Farah, who knows the system and its cruelties well. Their friendship becomes a romance as they try to imagine a life beyond the center. Gharoro-Akpojotor drew from her own experience seeking asylum in Britain.
“Dreamers” won an audience award at Dublin’s GAZE International LGBTQIA Film Festival, and Ronkẹ Adékọluẹ́jọ́ won the Iris Prize for best performance in a female role for playing Isio.
Black lesbians falling in love on screen and winning awards along the way? We’ll take it.
Several of the festival’s Black queer stories are rooted in Atlanta itself.
Directed by Black queer filmmaker Kerri Garrett, “A Westside Love Story” follows two queer HBCU sophomores whose mixed-up wing order becomes an impromptu first date through Atlanta’s West End.
Tatum is a fashion-loving criminal justice major born with HIV. Zion is a nonbinary documentary filmmaker. Their date moves through attraction, identity, HIV stigma and the particular familiarity of being young, Black and queer in Atlanta. Garrett has said she wanted to create more Black queer representation while making room for love and joy.
Watch the Trailer Below:
Out On Film’s Reel Resistance Fellowship, created with Atlanta Pride, supports Georgia LGBTQ+ filmmakers making short films about the people, places and movements that shaped queer life in the state. This year’s showcase includes Malachi “Seven” King’s “Beyond the Doors of Club 708.”
Club 708 was an important gathering place for Atlanta’s Black LGBTQ+ community. King’s documentary looks at the club’s influence and what was lost when it closed.
The local shorts lineup also includes the world premieres of Mya Breyana Morton’s “Breathe” and Charlene Fisk’s “Call and Response.” “Call and Response” is one of seven films in this year’s slate supported by Out On Film’s Filmmaker Fund.
That investment gives local filmmakers more opportunities to hold a place in the festival.
Watch the Trailer Below:
Fashion people, this one is for you. “Love, Patrick: Nothing Is Impossible” tells the story of Patrick Kelly, the Black gay Southern designer who became an international fashion star in Paris.
Kelly was born in Mississippi, spent part of his early adulthood in Atlanta, and became the first American and first person of color admitted to the Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-à-Porter, the governing body of French ready-to-wear fashion. His work was bright, campy, and unmistakably Black, often reclaiming racial imagery through the bows, buttons, and humor that became part of his signature.
Kelly moved to Atlanta in 1974 and designed window displays for Yves Saint Laurent’s Rive Gauche boutique before heading to New York and later Paris.
The documentary was created and executive produced by Atlanta radio and entertainment personality Ray Cornelius and Jess Manning. It covers Kelly’s career alongside race, identity and mortality.
For Atlanta audiences, the connection to the city was part of Kelly’s story before Paris made him famous.
Watch the Trailer Below:
“PUNKIE” follows former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Punkie Johnson away from the sketch-comedy format that introduced her to a national audience.
Directed by Audrey Olsen, the documentary follows Johnson on the road as she deals with a personal crisis and works to protect her artistic voice. It will make its Georgia premiere at Out On Film.
Johnson has spoken about growing up as a Black butch lesbian in New Orleans and wanting to put lives like hers on screen. “PUNKIE” turns the camera toward the person behind the comedy.
New Orleans is also central to “A Taste of Heaven: The Ecstatic Song & Gospel of Maestro Raymond Anthony Myles.” The documentary traces the gospel singer’s life from public housing and public schools to Southern churches and major music festivals before his murder in 1998, just as wider recognition seemed possible.
Myles was a queer Black man whose sexuality and faith existed inside the same life. The film looks at his music, community work and relationship to a Black church that did not always make that easy.
Watch the Trailer below:
The documentary short “Southern Son Shine” follows Black queer men living with HIV in the South across generations. It adds another distinctly Southern story to a program already paying close attention to Black queer memory, health and community.
Watch the Trailer Below:
The comedy shorts block also includes “Ornithomancy,” written by and starring Marquis Wright and directed by S. Vollie Osborn. Minutes before a dream-job interview, an anxious Winona starts reading the flight patterns of birds for answers while calls from their boyfriend, family, and roommate make an already shaky plan unravel. The 16-minute short turns job-search panic, identity, and the pressure to appear professional into surreal comedy.
The rest of the schedule is just as broad.
“Before I Do” opens the festival on Sept. 24. Tennis legend Billie Jean King is the subject of centerpiece documentary “Give Me the Ball!” from Liz Garbus and Elizabeth Wolff. Lesbian classic “Desert Hearts” returns to the big screen, with director Donna Deitch scheduled to appear.
Closing night belongs to “La Bola Negra,” starring Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close. Directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi won the 2026 Cannes Film Festival’s best-director prize for the film after its Cannes premiere received a 20-minute ovation.
The festival also includes work connected to Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Lilly Wachowski (‘Something You Should Know About Me), Alan Cumming, Frances Fisher and Rachel Dratch, along with international films, horror, comedy, trans stories, lesbian history, local shorts and filmmaker conversations.
The shorts are worth a look, too. “Hi Mom” is part of the drama shorts program. “Choked,” directed by Travis Alabanza, screens in the narrative shorts block, while “Mones,” directed by Zackary Drucker, and “Beba From 5-9,” featuring Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, are part of the Transfabulous trans shorts program.
This year’s theme is “The World We’re Making.” Black queer filmmakers are a visible part of that work, with stories about love, faith, HIV, fashion, nightlife, migration and family spread across the schedule.
Black queer girls are falling in love, HBCU students dating through the West End, a Nigerian woman finding love while seeking asylum, a Black butch comedian working through a difficult season, Atlanta nightlife history, Patrick Kelly’s fashion legacy and Black queer men talking about HIV in the South.
This festival carries a lot of range. The stories share identities without sharing one experience.
Out On Film has spent nearly four decades screening queer cinema in Atlanta. This year, Black queer audiences have plenty of reasons to be in the room.
The festival runs Sept. 24-Oct. 4 at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema. Find the full in-person and virtual schedules, passes and individual tickets on Out On Film’s festival site.
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