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October Events...

  • aGLIFF: Prism Film Festival
  • Beijing Queer Film Festival
  • BFI London Film Festival
  • BIGff: Bari International Gender Film Festival
  • Black Alphabet Film Festival
  • Busan International Film Festival
  • Cine Movilh
  • Cineffable
  • Dayton LGBT Film Festival
  • Diverso Festival Internacional de Cine LGBT
  • ENDIMARIS - Sitges LGTBIQ+ Film Festival
  • Everybody's Perfect
  • Fabulous Independent Film Festival
  • Festival Massimadi
  • Gender Bender
  • Hamburg International Queer Film Festival
  • ImageOut: Rochester
  • Iris Prize
  • LA Queer Film Festival
  • LGBT Toronto Film Festival
  • Lust*streifen Film Festival Basel
  • Melt Open
  • MIX COPENHAGEN LGBTQIA+ Film Festival
  • New Farm Queer Film Festival
  • NewFest
  • Norfolk Queer International Film Festival
  • Outshine Film Festival - Fort Lauderdale
  • Perlen – Queer Film Festival Hannover
  • Pink Screens in Brussels
  • Pride Pictures: Karlsruhe
  • QFFM - Queer Film Festival München
  • Queer Film Fest Weiterstadt
  • Queer Film Festival Oldenburg: Rollenwechsel
  • Queer-Streifen Regensburg
  • QueerFilm Festival Bremen
  • QueerFilmFest Rostock
  • Reel Q
  • San Antonio QFest
  • Scottish Queer International Film Festival
  • Tels Quels Festival
  • tilde: Melbourne Trans & Gender Diverse Film Festival
  • TLVFest
  • Transweek
  • Utah Queer Film Festival
  • Vinokino Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
  • Vues d'en Face - Grenoble
  • Way OUT West Film Fest
OUTsider Film & Arts Festival

OUTsider Film & Arts Festival

Wednesday, 18 February 2026 until Sunday, 22 February 2026

OUTsider welcomes LGBTQ+ art of ALL forms and content but encourages submissions that speak to the theme Monstrosity and the Obscene/Off-scene! 

As OUTsiders in the art world, queer and trans artists embracing and expressing through monstrosity has been a way to denounce the dominant systems and refuse being disciplined into normalcy. This refusal of the “normal” entails a decoding and a re-imagining of popular culture’s proclivity to equate the monstrous and the freakish with sexual deviancy and hysteria through vampires, werewolves, witches, and other such figurations. This continuous casting of queer and trans people as freaks, monsters, abnormal, not fully human, and a series of other characterizations in the dominant cultural sphere and by mainstream politics needs to be continually challenged. 

But we at OUTsider love and admire monsters (Latin, monstrum)--divine messengers, hybrid creatures, embodiments of duality–and artists that push against mainstream’s understanding of and attacks on us through radical, smart, and joyful embodied performances, and visual and sonic artistry. Our desire for OUTsider 2025 is to lift up creative responses to what is deemed filthy, offensive, and less than human in mainstream culture. This enables us to further expand the geographical limits of our island of misfits where we refuse to be in the scene of propriety as we further undermine the dominant strictures’ notion of what is obscene. Through collective and interactive flights of the imagination we build a better present and can imagine a future of boundless freedom. 

In short, send us your submission and come fly your freak flag with us! In all instances, strong consideration will be given to works from marginalized subjectivities, including those related to differences of race, gender, sexuality, ability, size, generation, and nation.