As the fall festival season moves toward its final stretch, one major cinematic gathering is preparing to take over New York: NewFest38, the 38th annual New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival, running October 15–25 across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, with select films also available virtually nationwide through October 30.
With 144 projects representing 23 countries, NewFest38 once again demonstrates just how expansive LGBTQ+ cinema has become. The program encompasses narrative features, documentaries and nonfiction, episodic work, shorts, special screenings and legacy titles — bringing together established filmmakers and performers with emerging voices.
For Brave New Hollywood, however, NewFest is more than another stop on the increasingly crowded fall festival calendar.
Why NewFest Matters — And Why BNH Considers It Essential
At Brave New Hollywood, we consider NewFest the premier and most important LGBTQ+ film and episodic festival in North America.
That is not simply because of its size or longevity. Founded in 1988, NewFest has developed a remarkable ability to put queer films into the same cultural conversation as the broader independent-film world — bringing major festival discoveries and high-profile titles together with daring independent work and films that might otherwise struggle to find a wider audience.
Just as importantly, NewFest understands that a queer film festival is about more than screening films. It is about community building: giving filmmakers, audiences, artists, industry professionals, and longtime supporters of LGBTQ+ cinema a place to gather around stories that reflect the complexity and diversity of queer life.
And then there is the programming.
Year after year, NewFest demonstrates an appetite for films that have something to say, films that take formal or narrative risks, and films that can travel well beyond the festival circuit. This year’s lineup — with titles arriving from Cannes, Berlinale, TIFF and other major festivals — is another strong example of that curatorial ambition.
Five Films Already Generating Buzz
Rather than attempting to rank the festival’s 144 projects, these are five titles that have already attracted significant attention through major festival premieres, filmmakers, casts or awards recognition.
LA BOLA NEGRA
NewFest38 opens October 15 with LA BOLA NEGRA, the sweeping Spanish-language drama from Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, known collectively as Los Javis.
The film connects three men living in three different eras of Spanish history — 1932, 1937 and 2017 — through desire, pain, sexuality and inheritance. The cast includes Guitarricadelafuente, Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, Milo Quifes, Lola Dueñas, Julio Torres, Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close.
The film arrives at NewFest after a major Cannes run, where Calvo and Ambrossi shared the Best Director award, followed by strong attention at TIFF. That makes its New York premiere one of the festival’s most anticipated events — and a particularly fitting film to launch NewFest38.
CLUB KID
Jordan Firstman’s feature directorial debut CLUB KID premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and has quickly become one of the year’s more talked-about queer films.
Firstman stars as a hard-partying New York club promoter whose life is disrupted when the 10-year-old son he never knew he had suddenly enters it. Cara Delevingne and Diego Calva also star.
The premise alone suggests a potentially wild ride, but what makes CLUB KID especially intriguing is its collision of New York nightlife, queer culture, comedy and unexpected fatherhood. NewFest has appropriately selected it as its New York Centerpiece.
THE MAN I LOVE
Closing the festival on October 25 is THE MAN I LOVE, the latest film from NewFest alum and acclaimed queer filmmaker Ira Sachs.
Rami Malek stars as Jimmy, a downtown actor and performance artist living with AIDS in late-1980s New York. Tom Sturridge, Rebecca Hall, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Luther Ford round out the ensemble.
Sachs has created a film about the AIDS era that, rather than reducing the period to tragedy, places art, desire, friendship and the pursuit of joy at its center. Its New York setting and Sachs’ deeply personal connection to the period make this one of the festival’s natural marquee titles.
COWARD
Director Lukas Dhont — whose films GIRL and CLOSE established him as one of contemporary European cinema’s most closely watched queer filmmakers — returns with COWARD, a World War I drama set among Belgian soldiers.
Pierre arrives at the front eager to prove himself, but his relationship with fellow soldier Francis, who organizes gender-bending theater performances for the troops, opens an unexpected path away from the brutality surrounding them.
COWARD premiered in Cannes Competition, where Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne shared the festival’s Best Actor award. Its New York City premiere at NewFest gives audiences an opportunity to see one of the year’s major European queer dramas before its wider release.
WHAT WILL I BECOME?
NewFest’s Documentary Centerpiece, WHAT WILL I BECOME?, comes from first-time directors Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos.
The filmmakers explore their own trans boyhoods while connecting their experiences with the lives and legacies of Blake Brockington and Kyler Prescott, two young trans men who died by suicide in 2015.
The documentary premiered at Berlinale, where it received the Amnesty International Film Award. That festival recognition, combined with the film’s deeply personal approach to community, memory and transmasculine identity, makes it one of the documentaries we will be watching closely.
The Centerpieces: MOUSE, CLARISSA and ELSINORE
NewFest38’s centerpiece program extends considerably beyond those five titles.
MOUSE, directed by Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson, is this year’s U.S. Centerpiece. Following their acclaimed GHOSTLIGHT, the filmmakers turn to a coming-of-age story set in 2002 Arkansas, with Oscar nominee Sophie Okonedo among the cast. The film premiered at the Berlinale and arrives at NewFest as a New York City premiere.
The International Centerpiece, CLARISSA, moves Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway from London to contemporary Lagos. Directed by Arie and Chuko Esiri, the Nigerian-American drama stars Sophie Okonedo, David Oyelowo, India Amarteifio, Toheeb Jimoh and Ayo Edebiri.
And ELSINORE, the Spotlight Centerpiece from Simon Stone, tells the true story of actor Ian Charleson, played by Andrew Scott. The film explores Charleson’s life, career and struggle at a moment when his greatest personal challenge intersected with his artistic life.
Together, the centerpiece selections illustrate something essential about NewFest’s programming: queer cinema does not have a single aesthetic, geography or narrative template.
The BNH Radar
Beyond the films already generating the most obvious festival buzz, there are several NewFest38 selections that immediately caught our attention.
GAYS AGAINST GUNS is high on our documentary radar. Directed by Paul Rowley, the film follows the activist group Gays Against Guns over a decade, beginning with the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub shooting and examining the group’s response to America’s gun-violence crisis. The film makes its U.S. premiere at NewFest and features commentary from filmmaker and longtime queer cultural provocateur John Waters.
KAREN WILLIAMS: I HAD TO LAUGH, directed by Andrea Meyerson, also deserves attention. The documentary chronicles the life and career of Karen Williams, who broke into the San Francisco comedy scene in the early 1980s as an openly lesbian Black comedian using specifically lesbian material. Following its September world premiere at Cinema Diverse in Palm Springs, NewFest provides another opportunity to discover a story about a groundbreaking performer whose cultural legacy deserves a wider audience.
From Japan comes TIGER, directed by Anshul Chauhan. The drama follows a 35-year-old gay masseuse whose already complicated life becomes increasingly precarious when a dispute with his sister over their family’s property threatens to expose his sexuality. The film also examines his desire to create a family and find a sense of belonging.
Brazil’s I AM GOING TO MISS YOU, from director Daniel Ribeiro, offers another distinctive perspective. The romantic drama follows Amanda and Caio, a trans couple whose seven-year relationship begins to fracture after they finally move in together. Featuring an entirely trans cast, the film makes its East Coast premiere at NewFest.
HUNKY JESUS, from documentary filmmaker Jennifer M. Kroot, turns its camera toward San Francisco’s Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and their legendary Easter celebration. Combining contemporary footage with the history of the organization, the film looks at performance, protest, humor and radical queer joy.
And for cinephiles interested in queer film history, NewFest’s virtual program offers a chance to revisit HALLELUJAH! Ron Athey: A Story of Deliverance, Catherine (Saalfield) Gund’s 1997 documentary about the influential performance artist Ron Athey. The film’s intimate footage captures Athey both on and offstage and provides a fascinating historical document of an important figure in queer performance art.
There is also COWARD, which deserves a second mention here simply because its combination of Lukas Dhont, Cannes recognition, queer romance and World War I setting makes it particularly difficult to overlook.
More Than a Festival
Under Interim Executive Director Lesli Klainberg, NewFest continues to emphasize the idea that queer cinema is also a way of bringing people together.
That philosophy feels particularly meaningful in 2026. NewFest38 is not simply assembling films with LGBTQ+ characters or themes. It is creating a meeting point between generations of queer filmmakers, established cinematic voices, emerging artists and audiences who want to see their experiences reflected on screen — while also inviting everyone else into those stories.
That may ultimately be NewFest’s greatest strength.
The films matter. The premieres matter. The stars, filmmakers and industry conversations matter. But so does the sense that, for eleven days, New York becomes a gathering place for people who believe queer stories belong at the center of cinema rather than at its margins.
And with a lineup that includes Cannes winners, Berlinale discoveries, international premieres, documentaries, legacy films and some of the year’s most anticipated queer narratives, NewFest38 looks ready to make that case all over again.
NewFest38 runs October 15–25, 2026, with select films available virtually nationwide October 15–30.
