Andrew Ahn to Receive Outfest Achievement Award at Outfest Los Angeles Summer Festival

Today, Outfest — the Los Angeles-based nonprofit that uplifts marginalized creators in the entertainment industry by providing career support and curating the exhibition and preservation of queer, LGBTQ+, and underrepresented stories — announced it will present Andrew Ahn with its Outfest Achievement Award on opening night Thursday, July 13.

The Outfest Achievement Award is the organization’s highest honor and recognizes the body of work that has made a significant contribution to gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender media arts and is presented by Genesis Motor America and Warner Bros. Discovery.

Andrew Ahn, a queer Korean American filmmaker, is known for Fire Island starring Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang, and Margaret Cho, Driveways starring Hong Chau and Brian Dennehy that was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards – Best First Screenplay and Best Lead Actress, and his feature directorial debut Spa Night, which won him the John Cassavetes at the Independent Spirit Awards and where he also received a nomination for the Someone to Watch Award. The film also received jury prize wins at Sundance and L.A. Outfest for star Joe Seo. He has directed fiction and documentary television for Netflix, FX, HBO Max, CBS, Sundance Channel, and KCET.  Ahn has been a champion of promoting diversity in the arts by mentoring youth filmmakers through programs like Pacific Arts Movement’s Reel Voices, Outfest’s OutSet, and the Sundance Institute’s Native Filmmaker Lab.

Previous recipients of the Outfest Achievement Award include Jane Lynch, John Waters, Bryan Fuller, Elliot Page and Billy Porter.

Also announced today, Outfest’s Trans, Nonbinary and Intersex Summit on Saturday, July 22, 2023 will now feature a panel entitled “Outcasts and Iconoclasts: The New Trans Cinema” featuring Aitch Alberto (Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe), Tre’vell Anderson (author of We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film), Vera Drew (The People’s Joker), Zackary Drucker (The Stroll, Queenmaker, The Lady and the Dale), Alice Maio Mackay (T Blockers), Sav Rodgers (Chasing Chasing Amy), and Georden West (Playland).

Founded by UCLA students in 1982, Outfest is the world’s leading organization that promotes equality by creating, sharing and protecting Queer and Trans stories on the screen. For forty-one years, Outfest has showcased thousands of films from around the world, educated and mentored hundreds of emerging filmmakers, and preserved more than 40,000 LGBTQ+ films and videos. Outfest programs include The Outfest Screenwriting Lab, which has mentored and helped launch the careers of nearly 150 screenwriters, and The Outfest UCLA Legacy Project, which, in partnership with the UCLA Film & Television Archive, is the only film archive in the world exclusively dedicated to preserving LGBTQ+ images, among others.

Outfest Los Angeles opens on Thursday, July 13 and runs through Sunday, July 23 and the full program is available at outfestla.org. 

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