There is something undeniably courageous, and at times wonderfully outrageous, about a group of LGBTQ+ activists who refuse to be silent in a country where guns have become as much a part of the national identity as the Constitution itself.
In Gays Against Guns, director Paul Rowley takes audiences on a moving, no-holds-barred journey into America’s troubling relationship with firearms, following the fearless members of Gays Against Guns (GAG), an activist organization born in the aftermath of the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando.
Gays Against Guns Official Website.
When Activism Becomes Political Theater
What makes the film especially compelling is the bold, often theatrical approach of its subjects. Armed with costumes, humor, provocative imagery, and an unapologetic presence, GAG members stage protests in spaces where they are neither welcomed nor always understood. Their demonstrations can be hilarious, deliberately uncomfortable, and occasionally absurd. But beneath the spectacle is a deadly serious mission: sometimes, to make people listen, you first have to make it impossible for them to look away.
Rowley captures this balance between performance and purpose with sensitivity, allowing the grief, exhaustion, anger, and vulnerability behind the activists’ public personas to emerge. The documentary also examines the evolution of the National Rifle Association (NRA) into the powerful political and cultural force it has become, offering important context for America’s seemingly endless gun debate.
Gun Violence, Identity and the American Experience
One of the film’s most profound observations comes from Antonius Wiriadjaja, a New York-based artist and activist and a survivor who was shot in a random act of street violence in Brooklyn in 2013.
Wiriadjaja points out: “gun violence impacting many aspects of my identity.”
It’s a statement that deserves serious reflection. In America, gun violence intersects with race, sexuality, gender, community, and the freedom to exist without fear. For many outside the United States, particularly those who have never experienced war or lived amid widespread armed violence, this complicated relationship between identity and firearms may be difficult to comprehend. Yet in America, the threat has become so normalized that it reaches into schools, nightclubs, places of worship, and everyday life.
Rowley, himself an Irish immigrant, brings an interesting outsider’s perspective to this distinctly American predicament. He also deserves credit for staying with this project over several years, creating a documentary that is both a portrait of resilience and an examination of the emotional price of fighting for change.
A Fearless Documentary With Humor, Heart and Urgency
And yes, there is humor here, sometimes hilariously so. The activists’ irreverence is not a distraction from the tragedy but part of their resistance. The film can make you laugh one moment and leave you deeply saddened the next.
Gays Against Guns is a must-see at NewFest38, a festival known for championing brave, provocative, and hard-hitting LGBTQ+ cinema. But its importance extends far beyond festival audiences. This is a film for Americans exhausted by the gun control debate and by the way conversations about public safety inevitably become entangled in competing interpretations of the Constitution, the Second Amendment, and individual rights.
Whether one agrees with every tactic employed by Gays Against Guns is almost beside the point. The film makes it difficult to dismiss the people behind those tactics, their pain, their determination, and their refusal to accept gun violence as an unavoidable fact of American life.
After all, when a society becomes accustomed to the unacceptable, perhaps a little theatrical disruption is exactly what it needs.
Gays Against Guns at NewFest38: Screening Information
Gays Against Guns makes its U.S. premiere on Friday, October 16, 2026, at 6:45 PM, at the SVA Theatre (Silas), 333 West 23rd Street, New York City, followed by a filmmaker Q&A.
The documentary will also be available for virtual streaming across the United States from October 15–30, 2026.
For tickets and additional information, visit NewFest’s official film page.
