Now in its 28th year, the OUTshine LGBTQ+ Film Festival Spring Edition (Miami/Fort Lauderdale) is one of the most exciting, highly anticipated showcases for new queer cinema. Each year OUTshine introduces moviegoers to some of the boldest and best new gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender screen stories. And judging by the mostly gay films I’ve sampled so far, it’s going to be a terrific fest.
This edition, running April 23 through May 3, 2026 in South Florida, boasts 20 international, North American and East Coast premieres from 20 countries across Miami-Dade and Broward counties. And the fest will be celebrating Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, whose film, Rock Out, will be screening on April 27, at Paradigm Cinemas: Gateway Fort Lauderdale (1820 E Sunrise Blvd).
“This spring will be one of OUTshine’s most extraordinary editions yet,” states Mark Gilbert, interim executive director, OUTshine LGBTQ+ Film Festival. “Filmmakers from all over the world are telling our queer stories for you to see – showing up, standing proud together and celebrating who we are.”
OUTshine will debut its first Opening Night Under the Stars party on April 23 with The Dinner (La Cena) (Spain, 2025)—review below.
This year’s Centerpiece film, Maspalomas (Spain, 2025), is about the the journey of a 76-year-old gay man.
Closing night, Sunday, May 3, will feature the international premiere of We’ll Find Happiness (Canada, 2025)—review below.
The Contending has already covered three of the Fests gems.
Helen Walsh’s captivating and atypical coming out indie, On the Sea, which features an extraordinary, award-worthy performance by Barry Ward. You can watch my VIDEO interview with Barry HERE.
Sergio Tovar Velarde’s mesmerizing feature, The Divine Tragedy, which introduces the world to the sexy and hypnotic young thesp, Pablo Gómez, You can watch my VIDEO interview with Pablo HERE.
And one of the most haunting and disturbing documentaries I’ve seen in recent memory, Rachel Mason’s My Brother’s Killer. You can read Joey Moser’s spot on review HERE.
Here are more outstanding gay-themed films playing at OUTshine that I highly recommend.
Leviticus
I managed to see Adrian Chiarella beguiling, chilling yet wonderfully clever queer horror film, Leviticus, at New Directors New Films Opening Weekend at Lincoln Center in NYC. And it blew me away. I am not a horror aficionado, so I was apprehensive going in, but this supernatural wonder of a film sucked me in, gave me lots of anxiety and scared the crap out of me, without insulting my intelligence. It also provided me with plenty to chew on post-screening. And while it has something in common with It Follows, it deviates enough to deliver something singular.
Set in an uber-religious Australian town, the film follows two teen boys, Naim (Joe Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen), who embark on a secret romance. Rumors soon begin to circulate in the highly conservative community about certain youth suffering from same-sex attraction and a “healer” is brought in to place some sort of spell on those afflicted. Naim and Ryan are both victims of this nightmarish curse where an unrelenting, destructive entity takes on the form of the person you love most. So, they literally become hunted by carbon copies of each other. Can they survive?
Both Bird and Clausen do impressive work as the teens under fire. Mia Wasikowska excels as the single mother under the delusion that she’s doing what’s best of her child. And Jeremy Blewitt delivers a terrific turn as Hunter, a classmate caught in the insanity.
Leviticus, which bowed at Sundance, boldly takes on repression, homophobia, betrayal, lust, love and the damages of religious zealotry. And, oddly for a horror film, always feels authentic. Chiarella cares enough for his two protagonists to honor them instead of giving in to the obvious trappings of the genre.
NEON will release Leviticus on June 19, 2026.
Free at Heart (original—and better—title: Free)
North American Premiere
Leave it to a German filmmaker to dare to tell a very taboo story in a sensitive, touching and bold manner. Portraying incest onscreen is mighty tricky. Gay incest is even more forbidden. And underage gay incest, I mean, ready the pitchforks! But writer-director Max Hegewald, in an impressive narrative feature debut, takes on this problematic subject matter, delivering a richly nuanced and complex film that refuses to judge its central characters—if anything it’s the ignorant and hateful people around them that get harshly condemned—and with good reason.
Sebastian (Linus Moog) is a 16-year-old trying to navigate life in a small town where school, church and occasional mischief provide the normal routine. He has friends and a new girlfriend. Life is what it’s suppose to be, that is until his family takes in Kolja (Aurel Klug), the 15-year-old son of a deceased friend of his dad’s. But it is soon revealed that Kolja is Sebastian’s brother from the same parents (I won’t go into detail). At first strangers, the boys grow quite close and their desire for one another intensifies and they cross a line—that line. And they live in a “God-fearing” town where any kind of deviation is cause for a Frankensteinian reaction.
Hegewald, who is also an actor, manages to elicit great sympathy for his teen protagonists, basically making the case that the heart wants what the heart wants and it’s no ones’ business to intervene—a striking notion when it comes to the portrayal of incest in any medium, but one to seriously consider.
It helps to have terrific actors like Moog and Klug, who journey from caution to apprehension to forming a real and palpable bond. It’s clear their relationship isn’t only sexual, they’ve fallen in love.
Klug has gorgeous matinee idol looks and the talent to back it up. If he’s career-careful, he could be quite the cinematic sensation.
One of the fascinating things Hedewald does with his story is pursue the notion that Sebastian and Kolja, not grown up together as siblings, have discovered a lost half of themselves necessary to exist, to thrive. That essential aspect of the story transcends the provocative.
—SPOILER—though, not really —
One of the thorniest issues with a film like Free at Heart is where to fade to black. Hegewald ends his movie on just the right note, allowing the audience to figure things out themselves, and giving his boys a necessary glimmer of hope.
We’ll Find Happiness (On Sera Heureux)
International Premiere
Closing Night Film and Party
Lea Pool’s intense and timely new film We’ll Find Happiness (On Sera Heureux) opens in Iran as a newly married young man Reza (Aron Archer), is caught having sex with his brother-in-law Ismael (Maxime Afshar), who is then killed by police. Reza manages to flee to France where he meets Saad (Mehdi Meskar) and the two make it to Quebec. But Reza is facing deportation. Saad has a plan to seduce the handsome gay Minister of Immigration spokesperson, Laurent (Alexandre Landry), in hopes of saving Reza from being sent back to Iran where he would face death.
The complex narrative, by Michel Marc Bouchard, unfolds in non-linear fashion and often plays like a nail-biting thriller with a few unexpected twists and ambiguous character motivations and manipulations.
One of the frightening aspect of the film, from a U.S. perspective, is the unspoken but glaring fact that our country used to be a place where refugees, fearing for their lives, could be granted asylum. That is no longer the case.
There are anywhere from 63 to 69 countries where homosexuality is considered a crime, 12 where the sentence is death. Those stats alone make We’ll Find Happiness an important work. It also happens to be a well-written, superbly acted and deftly directed movie.
A Man Walks Down the Street
East Coast Premiere
Israeli writer-director Yuval Hadadi has fashioned an intense and absorbing non-linear portrait of a closeted gay man trying to navigate his life in an ever-changing world. When we first meet middle-aged Raanan (Angel Bonanni) he’s returned to Tel Aviv after 30 years to sell his mother’s home and, by happenstance, sees an elderly man he recognizes. This moment burns deep into his psyche as he begins to revisit his life, three decades earlier, when his younger self (played by Gili Blum) embarked on an affair with an older man, Itzik (Uri Banai), at a time when he was hyper-sensitive to anyone knowing about his gay leanings.
In the present, he’s hooking up with a younger man, Eytan (Itay Polishuk) who is much freer, fluid and uninhibited than Raanan could ever hope to be, forcing our protagonist to confront his own internalized homophobia and regrets about the life he chose to lead.
A Man Walks Down the Street is a poignant and pointed look at the damage societal dictates can have on queer people, or anyone marginalized. Hadadi’s script tackles intergenerational conflict in a nuanced manner. And the ensemble is outstanding.
Lone Star Bull
North American Premiere
Men’s Spotlight Film and Party
I applaud David Stoddart’s rousing, action-packed comedy-suspense movie, Lone Star Bull, written with ’80’s cine-style flair by Edward & Rory McHenry! Why shouldn’t the queer canon have its own riveting if sometimes ridiculous revenge thriller? Especially one that stars a buff, taciturn and completely made-over Luke Macfarlane (Bros)— sexier than ever, btw.
The out actor usually plays the sweet boyfriend character but here he’s hunky, hyper-masculine Bull Jackson, a former military vet, now bouncer at Coco’s, a gay club that feature popular drag shows. When owner Coco (Bryan Batt) is shot in the head, Jackson teams up with the biting and witty drag queen, Jordan (a delightful D.J. “Shangela” Pierce, channeling her inner Lady Chablis) to find the culprit. They inadvertently uncover something insidiously homophobic.
Macfarlane is a treat to watch and underplays Bull perfectly. He’s the new gay action hero we didn’t know we needed. And the film genre-blends pretty well and has a socio-political theme at its core that feels mighty urgent, especially after the Supreme Court’s recent decision to reject a ban on conversion therapy.
Lunar Sway
U.S. Premiere
Canadian filmmaker Nick Butler’s engaging and atmospheric Lunar Sway is a very strange film. And I mean that as a high compliment. Too often, queer-themed movies fit a certain pattern and have a paint-by-numbers type of narrative progression. Not this one.
After we are initially introduced to our leading man, Cliff (a winning Noah Parker), living in the dull desert town of Mooncrest, we begin to realize that most of the characters that come in and out of his life are not normally found in your “How to Write a Screenplay” manuals, thank the indie gods.
There’s the artist Jovi (sexy Kaden Connors) who enjoys painting Cliff, naked, while he’s also naked. Jovi suffers from prosopagnosia (the inability to remember people’s faces).
Then we have Marg (Gilmore Girl’s Liza Weil, outstanding), the idiosyncratic woman who show’s up claiming to be Cliff’s biological mother.
Marg is being stalked by the wildly unhinged Bailey (Grace Glowicki, having a ball), a wacky, enigmatic presence.
Cliff has another flirtation going on with Stew (Big Love’s Douglas Smith) who enjoys being fellated while performing karaoke.
Honestly, the less you know about the sometimes-nonlinear plot, the better. Just strap in for a delightfully peculiar darkly comedic journey that might even all be taking place in the restless mind of our hummingbird-esque protagonist.
The Dinner (La Cena)
Opening Night
Simultaneously silly and subversive, Manuel Gómez Pereira’s The Dinner (La Cena) takes place in 1939 Spain where Maître d’ Genaro (Alberto San Juan) is ordered to put together a victory banquet for fascist leader Franco, by handsome Lt. Medina (Mario Casas). But the only way to do it right is to have the anti-Franco, top-chef prisoners released–at least for one night to prepare the feast–before they’re sent back to be executed. The expected mayhem ensues where satire and bloodshed blend in an almost Neil Simon’s The Cheap Detective kind of way.
The queer aspect of the film, a flirtation between Genaro and Medina, is so light it’s almost negligible, except when you take into account that the fascist regime at the time were trying to completely erase homosexuality. Like Mussolini speaking about Italy, there were no faggots in Spain.
The film also features out actor Asier Etxeandia (Pain and Glory) in a hyper masculine, villainous role, stealing all his scenes.
For a full listing of films, parties, special events and more and to purchase tickets, visit outshinefilm.com.
