Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ+ Film Festival will be held July 14-24, 2022 at multiple locations throughout Los Angeles
BY ORLY LYONNE
Outfest, the world’s leading LGBTQ+ organization whose global impact spans promoting queer empathy amongst the public, careers in entertainment and the exhibition and preservation of LGBTQIA+ stories and voices, has announced the complete lineup of its 40th Anniversary Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ+ Film Festival will be held July 14-24, 2022 at multiple locations throughout Los Angeles.
The lineup of over 200 films inclusive of feature narratives, documentaries, short films, and episodics includes a roster of festival favorites, an impressive 42 world premieres, films spanning every genre, and representing 29 countries from around the world.
Premieres include the Opening Night Gala world premiere of Billy Porter’s directorial debut Anything’s Possible, Closing Night Gala They/Them, and a 20th Anniversary screening of Todd Haynes’ Far from Heaven with Haynes, Julianne Moore, and producer Christine Vachon in person.
Notable festival favorites making their Los Angeles premieres at Outfest Los Angeles include Sundance Audience Award winner Girl Picture, as well as Sundance favorites Sirens, about a female thrash metal band from Lebanon; Mars One, a family drama from Brazil that centers a love story between two women; and Chae Joynt’s Framing Agnes, starring Zackary Drucker, Angelica Ross, Silas Howard, and others; Berlin’s Teddy Award-winning Three Tidy Tigers Tied a Tie Tighter, as well as master filmmaker Francois Ozon’s latest, Peter von Kant; Amanda Kramer’s Please Baby Please, a stylized, 1950s-set dismantling of gender roles starring Andrea Riseborough, Henry Melling, Karl Gluser, and Demi Moore; and Tribeca selections like horror film Attachment, which sees a woman’s new romance with her girlfriend complicated by her girlfriend’s orthodox Jewish family and their belief that she is possessed by a demon; All Man: The International Male Story, a doc that catalogs the famously homoerotic fashion catalog of yesteryear, and Breaking the Ice, which explores a possible romance among a female hockey team.
World premieres include Stay on Board: The Leo Baker Story, a doc from Drew Barrymore’s Flower Films and Pulse Films; the UK feature Phea, a modern lesbian spin on the myth of Orpheus, starring singer and musician Sherika Sherard; Mercedes Kane’s Art and Pep, which chronicles decades of LGBTQIA+ activism through the owners of iconic Chicago gay bar Sidetrack; and writer/comedian/singer Scout Durwood’s Youtopia, which sees Durwood unwittingly become the leader of a hipster millenial cult..
Outfest Los Angeles’ Episodics section also features a host of world premieres, including an advanced look at Shudder’s forthcoming docuseries Queer for Fear, which explores the LGBTQIA+ influence on over a century of horror cinema, with EPs Bryan Fuller and Steak House, and interviewees Kimberly Pierce and Alonso Duralde expected to appear in person; Queer Riot is a comedy special that goes behind the scenes of a queer comedy night held in a former nun’s residence in Los Angeles, headlined by Margaret Cho; and writer/producer Des Moran (Grown-ish, Queer as Folk) premieres the first episode of his series halfsies, about six Black half-siblings who re-enter each other’s lives after a death in the family. This section will also host a free sneak peek screening of the upcoming Prime Video series A League of Their Own, starring Abbi Jacobson, with talent in attendance.
The festival will also spend three nights at The Ford Theater in Hollywood for Outfest Under the Stars, which combines screenings with live, on-stage performances. These screenings include the world premiere of Kit Williamson’s (of the Emmy-winning EastSiders) new series, Unconventional, about queer siblings in Palm Springs attempting to form a new kind of family. The series cast includes Kit Williamson, Aubrey Peeples, James Bland, Briana Venskus, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Constantine Rousouli, and Jenna Ushkowitz, with appearances from Kathy Griffin, Willam Belli, Laith Ashley and Beau Bridges; God Save the Queens stars RuPaul’s Drag Race superstars Alaska Thunderfuck, Laganja Estranja, and Kelly Mantle, alongside Jordan M Green as a quartet of drag queens whose personal issues land them all in the same group therapy (all four leads will be onstage for a pre-show drag performance at The Ford); and I Have to Laugh: Comedy Night at the Ford, that will begin with a live stand-up showcase featuring the cast of Outfest Los Angeles ‘22 selection Queer Riot, headlined by Margaret Cho, and featuring River Butcher, Brad Loekle, Akeem Woods, and Daniel Webb, and be followed by a collection of some of the funniest short films in this year’s lineup.
The 2022 Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival is proudly presented by Warner Bros. Discovery and IMDb. Premiere Sponsors include Prime Video, Peacock, Gilead, the DGA, THE FIGHT Magazine, and Ammo Creative.
For more information and for a complete listing of films in 2022 Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival, log on to OutfestLA.org.
