The frameline Film Festival has announced the winners from its 2024 program.
The top honors went to Luke Gilford’s “National Anthem,” which took home the Outstanding First Feature Award, and Chloé Barreau’s “Fragments of a Life Loved,” which won Outstanding documentary Feature.
frameline, the world’s largest and longest-running LGBTQ film festival, ran from June 19–29, with 120 screenings, programs and events held in theaters across the Bay Area, including the Herbst Theatre and Palace of Fine Arts Theatre.
Highlights of the festival included the Castro Theatre’s first-ever celebration of Juneteenth — a block party that featured the official re-lighting of the venue’s iconic neon blade sign and marquee, performances from the all-Black drag collective and a special outdoor screening of “Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero.”
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Other highlights included a special 30th anniversary screening of the 4K restoration of “Go Fish,” attended by Rose Troche and Guinevere Turner, the “Queer Premiere” of Anthony Schatteman’s “Young Hearts,” the U.S. premiere of Juan Pablo Di Pace and Andrés P. Estrada’s “Duino” and Osama Chami’s “Una película barata.”
The festival ushered in Pride Weekend with a party at Oasis. The celebration featured a live performance by singer, songwriter and producer Linda Perry, which was followed by a screening of Don Hardy’s documentary about her life, “Linda Perry: Let It Die Here”
frameline48 closed out the festival with an intimate conversation with producer and writer Lena Waithe, who was presented with PvNew’s Creative Conscience Award.
“Every year, frameline is marking new ‘firsts,’ and 2024 was no exception. frameline48 began with an unprecedented community celebration of Blackness and queerness, which set the stage for the entire festival to be a celebration of all of our intersecting queer identities,” said Allegra Madsen, frameline’s executive director. “As both the leader of this dynamic, community-centered film organization and a long-time programmer, I couldn’t be prouder of frameline48’s success. But the success isn’t just frameline’s — the success belongs to the filmmakers, storytellers, and audiences who came together to celebrate the power queer cinema has to change the world and shape the cultural narrative.”
As previously announced, the recipients of the 2024 Colin Higgins Youth Foundation Grant are
filmmakers Farah Jabir (Kasbi) and Leaf Lieber (Burrow).
Both Jabir and Lieber will each receive $15,000 to support their future film projects. The grants help to uplift LGBTQ youth filmmakers, and are underwritten by the Colin Higgins Foundation — an organization named after “Harold and Maude” and “9 to 5” director Colin Higgins.
The festival also presented its Out in the Silence Award, an annual honor conferred on an outstanding film project that highlights brave acts of visibility, especially in places where such acts are rare and unexpected because of the dominant systems that make it difficult for LGBTQ people to live authentic lives. Underwritten by longtime film community members Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson, the 2024 Out in Silence Award was awarded to the feature-length documentary film “Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story” by directors Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee. The award was presented to the recipients following a screening of the film.
See the full list of juried winners below.
Outstanding first feature: ($2,500)
“National Anthem” directed by Luke Gilford
“Jurors serving on this year’s Best Feature Award panel admit to having a tough time narrowing it down to one selection this year. But they did it, lassoing one that impressed the panel from the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle the most: Luke Gilford’s National Anthem. The group praises it for being an atmospheric, romantic, and beautifully crafted celebration of LGBTQ+ experiences and gender diversity. The panel was particularly impressed with Gilford’s humane storytelling, graceful steerage, engagingly down-to-earth tone, and life-embracing characters. The group also came up with two honorable mentions: for the beautiful and tender ‘Young Hearts’ and the poignant and moving ‘In the Summers.’”
Outstanding documentary feature ($2,500)
“Fragments of a Life Loved” (Frammenti di un percorso amoroso), directed by Chloé Barreau
Outstanding narrative short award ($750)
Paradise Europe (Du Bist so Wunderbar), directed by Leandro Goddinho & Paulo Menezes
Honorable mentions: “If I’m Here It Is by Mystery” (Se Eu Tô Aqui é Por Mistério), directed by Clari Ribeiro and “Ripe!” directed by Tusk
Outstanding documentary short award ($750)
“Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr” directed by Kimberly Reed
Honorable mentions: “Wouldn’t Make It Any Other Way” directed by Hao Zhou and “You can’t get what you want but you can get me” directed by Samira Elagoz and Z Walsh
frameline48 Comcast Audience Awards
Comcast audience award for narrative feature ($1,500)
“All Shall Be Well (從今以後)” directed by Ray Yeung
Comcast audience award for documentary feature ($1,500)
“The World According to Allee Willis” directed by Alexis Spraic
