Rainbow Umbrella Film Festival
Following the success of 2025's festival , we are delighted to announce the ninth RAINBOW UMBRELLA Film Festival, which will take place at THE HEN & CHICKENS THEATRE in January 2026. The programme will be announced in December 2025 and tickets will go on sale at unrestrictedview.co.uk & uvff.co.uk
The festival is run by filmmakers and aims to celebrate the very best in indie and encourage all aspects of independent LGBT film making.
As well as live screenings, there will also be various networking events to be announced shortly.
The Festival is at The Hen & Chickens Theatre, an independent cinema in Islington, North London and the pub below will be the networking and meeting place.
Festival Director Mark Lyminister has worked with Unrestricted View and been Theatre Manager of The Hen & Chickens Theatre for many years. He has also worked extensively as an actor in theatre, film and TV.
" Rainbow umbrella has been set up to encourage actors and film makers from the LGBT community to have a platform to express their hopes, fears, desires and experiences and share them with new audiences. We aim to allow anyone with a voice, an opinion, a vision, a calling, to be free to write, act, direct and be free to express themselves through the medium of film. From first time film makers with little or no budget to the films with more experience and financial clout, they are all welcome under our umbrella!
We want to share films that show every emotion of someone experiencing life as an LGBT person."
Best Short
Best Foreign Short
Best Director
Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Supporting Actress
Best Supporting Actor
Best Cinematography
Best Screenplay
2026 films...
15th January…
The Last Story on Earth (Dir: Aaron Immediato, USA). Facing angry protesters, a determined drag queen does her best to finish a fairy tale reading at the local library. But when an alien invasion upends Earth’s existence, the queen encounters new challenges that carry terrifying outcomes for humanity.
Diamonds on Plastic (dir: Philip Cairns, Canada)
Dinner for Six (Dir: Isabela Lisboa, Brazil). Duda is a young lesbian who collects breakups. She is determined to make her next relationship work and decides to invite all her ex-girlfriends and her best friend to dinner. As soon as the guests arrive, secrets and surprises are brought to the table.
Poppy (Dir: Morena Sarzo, Italy).
The lifespan of a poppy is fleeting. Similarly, romantic love is sometimes just as brief before it loses its allure. Two women share a fragile, intense bond, strained by silence and doubt. When one hesitates, the delicate balance begins to fracture.
16th January…
Ramblings of a Middle-Aged Drag Queen (Dir: Aharon Jinjihashvili, Canada). A prying journalism student interviews a world-wearied drag queen about her life and career.
Man Cured (Dir: Kyle Heiner, Johan T. Anderson, USA). Lucas—an insecure, in-the-closet 22 year old—is stuck babysitting for a well off Brooklyn family to get by. On any other Friday evening, he arrives to watch Freud, a precocious 7 year old. Only there’s one problem: a new babysitter, Frankie, is already there. What happens as a chance occurrence between two young men spirals into a weekend of self-discovery and acceptance. Being bold doesn’t always mean being loud.
All of us at River’s End (Dir: Nick Elson, Australia). Lucas and friends reunite on the anniversary of their friend’s passing. As tensions run high through liquor and blame, they all tear at the seams.
At Lucy’s Last Night (Dir: Ethan Roberts, USA). The morning after hooking up, two recent college grads wrestle with their feelings for each other while a strange and inexplicable phenomenon creeps up in the background.
BOOK TICKETS HERE
17th January
The Last Take (Dir: Brian Foster, USA). Facing the end, a movie star from the golden age of Hollywood must reconcile with the only man he ever loved.
The Blame Silence (dir: Israel Cordova, Brazil). After his father’s death, Mauro, a rural farmer, finds himself facing a freedom he never dared to live. Caught between guilt and desire, he confronts his fears to finally embrace who he truly is.
“The Last Sleep” (Dir: Federica Bertellotti, Italy). Landon, a young nobleman, fails to meet his father’s expectations due to his homosexuality. The man cruelly torments him in an attempt to change him, ultimately driving him to suicide.
However, Landon had concealed an intimate and profound love with a vampire, who now refuses to accept his loss and seeks revenge against his tormentor.
Stimulants & Empathogens (Dir: Mateusz Pacewicz, Poland). Antek (18), a a closeted teenage gay from a wealthy family, invites a drug dealer – Kuba (18) – he has a hopeless crush on – to his villa under the pretext of another drug transaction. However, he does not know that Kuba has a mission that he received from his superiors – his Father and his Brother. The dealer’s family suspects that Antek resells their mephedrone at a profit at his school, so Kuba is supposed to investigate the situation. The story begins as a romantic comedy of errors, turns into a social satire to end, after various adventures, with an emotional plot twist.