Frameline Announces 2026 Completion Fund Grantees Ahead of 50th LGBTQ+ Festival
Since 1991, the Frameline Completion Fund has awarded $717,500 to 203 projects centered on LGBTQ+ stories
Today, Frameline, the queer media nonprofit that hosts the annual San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, announced the recipients of its annual Frameline Completion Fund grants. Every year, the Frameline Completion Fund provides grants to emerging and established filmmakers, supplying much-needed financial support to artists who are struggling to secure funding in the homestretch of finishing films that center LGBTQ+ people and their communities.
The 2026 Frameline Completion Fund recipients include Barbara Forever by Brydie O’Connor, which premiered at Sundance and won the Teddy Award for documentary at Berlin Film Festival; Hunky Jesus by Jennifer M. Kroot, which is poised to open BFI Flare; Jaripeo by Efraín Mojica & Rebecca Zweig, which premiered at Sundance; Adam’s Apple by Amy Jenkins, which will have its World Premiere at SXSW; Lady Champagne by D’Arcy Drollinger, which will have its World Premiere at BFI Flare; and the short film But Still, We Move by Theo Angel.
Last year, O’Connor received a Completion Fund Grant for her short, The Roaming Center for Magnetic Alternatives. Having previously received grants for The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin, To Be Takei, and It Came from Kuchar, Kroot is part of an elite group of fellow LGBTQ+ filmmakers — Cheryl Dunye, Barbara Hammer, Rodney Evans, Silas Howard, and Sam Feder — who have had three (or more) projects selected over the past 35 years.
This year’s jurors included filmmaker Elena Oxman, whose debut feature, Outerlands, screened at Frameline49; Randy Myers, award-winning freelance writer and president of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle; and filmmaker LaTajh Weaver, whose acclaimed short, Budget Paradise, received a 2025 Frameline Completion Fund Grant and screened at Frameline49.
“This year’s jurors were impressed by the creative, bold, and sometimes fearlessly experimental measures filmmakers took in bringing their remarkable queer stories to life. Jurors were particularly wowed by the quality of work coming from the vibrant Bay Area scene and how those films fondly celebrate community. Jurors also wish to single out how the popular approach to liberally use archival images and videos to complement and contextualize subjects and topics is, in particular, creating some exciting and illuminating work. It was a hard decision to narrow down the list since all are deserving.”
Established in 1991, the Frameline Completion Fund has funded over 200 films with more than $700,000 in grants, ensuring that LGBTQ+ film and video projects are completed and viewed by wider audiences. Projects finished with assistance from the Frameline Completion Fund include Dee Rees’ Pariah, Rose Troche’s Go Fish, Isabel Sandoval’s Lingua Franca, Angelo Madsen’s North by Current, Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behavior, Paris Poirier’s Last Call at Maud’s, Yen Tan’s 1985, Rodney Evans’ Brother to Brother, Dean Hamer & Joe Wilson’s Kumu Hina, David Weissman & Bill Weber’s The Cockettes, Jeffrey Schwarz’s Vito, Cynthia Wade’s Freeheld, Jennifer Reeder’s Signature Move, Sam Feder’s Heightened Scrutiny, Alessandra Lacorazza’s In the Summers, Deborah Craig’s Sally!, and Susan Muska & Greta Olafsdottir’s The Brandon Teena Story.
“Frameline exists because queer artists have always had to build their own infrastructure,” said Allegra Madsen, Frameline’s Executive Director. “As federal funding continues to disappear from arts organizations across the country, we’re proud to be one of the institutions still standing, with fifty years of proof that we know how to endure, and a clear commitment to the LGBTQ+ storytellers who will define the next fifty. That’s exactly why our Completion Fund grantees matter so much right now: Investing in these artists isn’t just meaningful — it’s how we build toward that future. Reaching our 50th festival while also doing this work feels urgent and necessary.”
Submissions to the Frameline Completion Fund range from documentary and narrative works to experimental, animated, and episodic projects, so long as they are about LGBTQ+ people and their communities. In order to be considered for a grant, projects that are submitted must have 90% of production finished and be in, or about to commence, the post-production phase.
FULL LIST OF 2026 FRAMELINE COMPLETION FUND GRANTEES
Adam’s Apple
DIR Amy Jenkins 2026 USA 98 min
Documentary Feature
An intimate, collaborative documentary told through the dual perspectives of Adam, a transgender teen, and his mother, visual artist Amy Jenkins, that offers an authentic and tender counterpoint to the hostility facing trans youth today.
Barbara Forever
DIR by Brydie O’Connor 2025 USA 102 min
Documentary Feature
An exploration of the films, archive, and ongoing cultural impact of experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer, revealing her ingenious lifelong artistic effort to create and record lesbian histories, personal and societal.
But Still, We Move
DIR Theo Angel 2026 UK 14 min
Narrative Short
When Tendai’s housemate moves out, they find themselves facing access challenges alone for the first time. As they navigate their independence, they are hounded by the image of the “perfect wheelchair user” and how they feel they fail to match up to it, until they decide to take action and free themselves from the narrative.
Hunky Jesus
DIR Jennifer M. Kroot 2026 USA 85 min
Documentary Feature
A chronicle of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, from the order’s founding in the ‘70s to the Sisters’ history on the front lines of the AIDS crisis to their social justice movement’s current efforts to take on Trump’s America.
Jaripeo
DIR Efraín Mojica & Rebecca Zweig 2026 Mexico/USA/France 70 min
Experimental Documentary Feature
A journey to Michoacán’s hypermasculine rodeos descends into the subconscious of memory, queer desire, and longing, leading to a reckoning with the wounds and beauty of a home left behind.
Lady Champagne
DIR D’Arcy Drollinger 2026 USA 95 min
Narrative Feature
The hilarious sequel to D’Arcy Drollinger’s Shit & Champagne (2020), starring the drag artist as erotic dancer Champagne Horowitz Jones Dickerson White.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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