Outfest has returned with OutfestNEXT, four days of cinema celebrating the resilience, joy, and artistry of LGBTQ+ storytelling. Join us for 20 programs, including features, shorts, and archival selections that spotlight both established and emerging queer storytellers.
Below you can read about some of the films playing at the event! For full details and tickets click here.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6
6pm – Alumni Spotlight: Yen Tan’s All That We Love: Across his entire body of work, Outfest Screenwriting Lab alum Yen Tan has always explored themes of longing and loss with acute emotional intelligence, from Pit Stop (2013 Outfest Grand Jury Award for Outstanding Actor in a US Feature Film) to 1985 (2018 Outfest Grand Jury Award and the Best Screenwriting). He continues this journey of rich humanism with All That We Love, crafting a heartfelt and poignant depiction of grief and what it means to start anew.
The great Margaret Cho delivers a powerfully vulnerable lead performance as Emma, whose sense of stability enters an unexpected tailspin after the death of her beloved dog. Faced with an empty nest, her turbulent midlife awakening creates reverberating chaos for everyone in her path; including her estranged ex-husband (Kenneth Choi) who has suddenly returned from Singapore, their free-spirited daughter (Alice Lee) who is moving to another country, and her best friend (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) who expresses the recent loss of his husband in a way she does not understand.
Further establishing himself as a great director of actors — all of whom deliver grounded, surprising, and beautiful performances — Tan gently blends sorrow with insightful humor, exploring universal themes: aging, friendship, parenthood, mortality, past loves, second chances, and the profound connection we all have with our pets — let alone to one another. Screening followed by Q&A with director Yen Tan, producer Rebecca Green, and actor Margaret Cho. Los Angeles LGBT Center, 1125 N McCadden Place, Los Angeles
8:30pm – Bryan Fuller presents Dust Bunny: In 2017, legendary nightmare weaver Bryan Fuller was honored with the Outfest Los Angeles Achievement Award. In his acceptance speech, Fuller chronicled his impressive TV career, from the candy-colored fantasy of Pushing Daisies through the exquisite corpses of Hannibal to the sexy and destructive deities of American Gods. Eight years later, Fuller returns to Outfest to dive into an extended conversation on his acclaimed career to date, sitting down with film critic Alonso Duralde to discuss the methods behind his madness.
Following their discussion, OutfestNEXT is proud to host a screening of his feature directorial debut Dust Bunny. Starring Mads Mikkelsen, David Dastmalchian, and the fabulous Sigourney Weaver, the film follows an 8-year-old girl who hires her hitman neighbor to kill the vicious, hungry, monster under her bed. Filled with his trademark luscious colors, tones, and textures, Fuller uses his distinct style and unique lens to create a magical, sinister world that only he could bring to the big screen. Screening preceded by conversation with filmmaker Bryan Fuller and film critic Alonso Duralde. Los Angeles LGBT Center, 1125 N McCadden Place, Los Angeles
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7
8:30pm – Rock Out:Dustin Lance Black returns to his roots as a documentarian to excavate the often-veiled queer lives of the greatest culture-defining disruptors and masterminds of music in the 1960’s and 1970’s. From Little Richard and The Beatles to Elton John and David Bowie, Rock Out digs deep to uncover the untold queer stories behind rock-and-roll and their lasting influence today. Featuring an original drum score by Patty Schemel (Hole), Rock Out also explores the relationship between Black and his late brother, Marcus, whose lifelong attempt to belong in the hard-edge, hyper-masculine music boys club led to a tragic end. On this journey through rock music history, Black connects with musicians and industry insiders including Dolly Parton, Roger Daltrey, Danny Fields, Peter Brown, Rolling Stone magazine co-founder Jann Wenner and glam punk rocker Jayne County to theorize why queer contributions to the rock-and-roll legacy have been buried, until now. Screening followed by Q&A with director Dustin Lance Black and drummer Patty Schemel. Los Angeles LGBT Center, 1125 N McCadden Place, Los Angeles
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8
11am – At the Place of Ghosts (Sk+te’kmujue’katik): Visionary Canadian filmmaker Bretten Hannam follows up their wondrous feature WILDHOOD (Outfest Fusion 2022) with another visually inventive journey of siblinghood and generational healing. This time, Hannam bravely leaps into a new genre and setting: the Sk+te’kmujue’kati, a haunted forest where ancestral ghosts weave seamlessly into the present among those who walk through its trees in search of answers.
After a malevolent spirit from their past returns to the physical realm, threatening their already fragile sense of closure, estranged siblings Mise’l (Blake Alec Miranda) and Antle (Forrest Goodluck; THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST, Outfest Los Angeles 2018) must band together to confront the darkness of their childhood by embarking upon a dangerous and immersive journey into the woods. Braving violent colonial specters, the volatile elements of both water and land, and supernatural creatures of vast scale, their treacherous odyssey unearths the buried family secrets that bind them together – and offers an opportunity to build new, stronger ties to replace them in the future. Aided by their invigorating cinematic approach to depicting cyclical and interconnected time onscreen, Hannam has created an essential new entry into the canon of Indigenous horror. Look Dine-in Cinemas Glendale, 128 Artsakh Avenue, Glendale
1:15pm – Drive Back Home: In the winter of 1970, Wid, a cantankerous plumber from rural Canada, receives a call that his estranged, openly gay brother Perley (Alan Cumming in a commanding, electric performance) has been arrested. At his mother’s insistence, Wid must drive his beat-up work truck 1000 miles to the big city of Toronto to bail his brother out and bring him home. Now stuck in a car with each other, the brothers must confront the dangers and violence of small-town intolerance, the gulf between them, and past traumas that have haunted their family.
Set against a beautifully shot, desolate snowscape and inspired by his grandfather and great-uncle, director Michael Clowater balances buoyant moments of quirky humor with the unflinching reality that Perley lives in. While acceptance doesn’t always come easily, the journey to finding it is filled with unexpected laughs, heart-breaking truths, and an unbreakable love. Look Dine-in Cinemas Glendale, 128 Artsakh Avenue, Glendale
3:30pm – Shorts: Pride Is a (Laugh) Riot: There’s a lot you could say about our community: some of it’s good, some of it’s even better. But one thing no one has ever said is, “queer people are not funny.” (Well, no one worth listening to, anyway.) These shorts showcase the queer experience in all its joyful hilarity. Oh, it feels good to laugh. Look Dine-in Cinemas Glendale, 128 Artsakh Avenue, Glendale
- She Raised Me, Ben Lewis
- Over Easy, Jiyeon Kim-Myung
- Minister Chucky, Graham Kolbeins and Jonathan Andre Culliton
- Are You Fucking Kidding Me?!, Zen Pace
- Dead End, Kendall Alex Payne
- The Variable, Ezra Li
- Poreless, Harris Doran
6:15pm – We Are Pat: As far back as they can remember, filmmaker Rowan Haber (2013 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Fellow) always had an obsession with Pat, Julia Sweeney’s infamous gender-ambiguous character from 1990s Saturday Night Live and, later, the largely dismissed (and completely misunderstood!) feature film It’s Pat: The Movie (1994). Weaving together compulsively entertaining archival footage with hilarious yet thoughtful contemporary interviews, Haber explores with riveting inquiry the genesis of Pat and how Pat became a short-hand for a slur against trans and gender-fluid people in the 90s. But where Haber sets their documentary apart is by gathering a murderers row of queer and trans comedians alongside Julia Sweeney herself such as Grace Freud, Robin Tran, Hayden Johnson, Brontez Purnell, and many more, to shift the perspective of the Pat sketches away from the cis gaze in which they were originally presented and create their own fresh spin through original sketches.
Through this utterly unexpected technique, Haber, Sweeney, and the coterie of comedians not only reclaim a character whose implicit queerness has both obsessed and haunted queer and trans people for decades, but they develop a new, trans gaze — one that’s messy, shifting, sometimes illegible, and never not hilarious. One that invites all audiences to reimagine Pat in their image, or themselves in Pat’s image.
Camp announces the arrival of a major new voice in the landscape of queer cinema, busting through taboos and genre conventions through its expansive visual ideas and confessional themes. Fast—frequent collaborator of similarly path-breaking figures in trans cinema Alice Maio Mackay and Louise Weard—has made Gen Z’s answer to The Craft, and she might just be its spiritual successor to David Lynch.
Preceded by the short film: Metamorphosis (dir. Marizó Siller, Daviel Shy) A re-imagining of Ovid’s metamorphosis trope—in which Daphne transforms into a tree to escape Zeus—where the violence is removed from the story and instead, her desire is foregrounded. Look Dine-in Cinemas Glendale, 128 Artsakh Avenue, Glendale
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9
2:45p – State of Firsts: Representative Sarah McBride made history last November as the first duly elected out transgender Member of Congress. Achieved amidst a consequential national election marred by cynical messaging attacks from the Republican Party exploiting and scapegoating the trans community, this designation — for her — carries both immense pride and immense public pressure. As candidate-turned-elected official, McBride must learn to navigate an uncharted course through today’s political minefield, weaving through willful misunderstanding and flat-out bigotry towards a more perfect union with liberty and justice for all. Riding shotgun on the journey from main street Delaware to the halls of D.C. with remarkable access into her lives inside and out of the public eye, director Chase Joynt (Framing Agnes, Outfest Los Angeles 2022) evokes the breathless behind-the-campaign-trail drama of documentary classics like The War Room just as deftly as he continues to mine rich insights from the intersection of gender and media. With unwavering optimism and the support of her (incredibly watchable) family, Delaware’s newest Congresswoman heads into battle for her constituents while the gaze of the national spotlight acts as a constant reminder that the stakes couldn’t be higher. Look Dine-in Cinemas Glendale, 128 Artsakh Avenue, Glendale
5:45pm – Shorts:The Dark Side of the Rainbow: If there’s one thing queer people understand, it’s how to play with form to make an object more interesting. From surreal horror to dystopian animation to blaxploitation, these filmmakers reinterpret the genres they’re working in to create work that is altogether captivating, alive, and defiantly queer. Look Dine-in Cinemas Glendale, 128 Artsakh Avenue, Glendale
- The Last Story on Earth, Aaron Immediato
- Anino, MG Evangelista
- Lion in the Wind, TT Takemoto
- La Dichotomie, Suzie Toot, Dan Ingram, & Oscar Ruso
- RAT!, Neal Suresh Mulani
- The Eating of an Orange, May Kindred-Boothby
- ATTAGIRL!, Klimovski
8:30pm – Lakeview:This one goes out to all those who’ve braved the treacherous wilderness that is an Airbnb weekend retreat with your girlfriends. Darcy is a bisexual woman who’s just finalized her divorce, and she is ready to celebrate. So, she invites her closest queer girlfriends for a weekend at her lakehouse: Julien and Julie Anne — “The Julies,” as they’re affectionately called — who are expecting and have complex feelings about it; Lauren and her new, much-younger girlfriend Phoebe, who’s never met the group and is anxious for their approval; Lucy, who is going through a break-up herself and self-medicating to get through it; and Dax, an indie musician uncomfortable with her newfound fame (played by Canadian singer-songwriter Hilary Adams, whose original music and performance will leave you weepy) — except in that it gives her the confidence to shoot her long-desired shot for Darcy.
This open-hearted dramedy is a tender and funny look at queer female friendship in all its messy, warm, horny, and dramatic forms. Bring the group chats and the situationships, because filmmaker Tara Thorne has crafted a film you’ll want to revisit with a cozy blanket, a warm mug, and – maybe even – some boygenius on the Bluetooth speaker for after the credits roll. Look Dine-in Cinemas Glendale, 128 Artsakh Avenue, Glendale
