Atlanta’s Out on Film festival returns to tell LGBTQ+ community’s stories
A vital part of Atlanta’s cultural firmament, Out on Film — now in its 38th year — is an LGBTQ+ film festival. It’s a beacon attracting a community that can find support, identity and meaning.
As the festival director of Out on Film for the past 17 years, Jim Farmer has overseen the nationally-recognized event that drew 15,000 attendees last year.
Out on Film also had an incredible 1,150 film submissions this year, due in part to the festival’s status as “the only Oscar qualifying LGBTQ+ film festival in the country,” said Farmer, adding that the festival is also BAFTA (the British Academy of Film and Television Arts) qualifying. With a relatively modest budget of $266,000, this year’s festival will present a bounty of offerings — including 152 feature films, short films, panels and Q&As, and a tribute to trans actor and activist Angelica Ross, who has appeared in “Pose” and “American Horror Story.” Actor Mo’Nique will also attend a screening of her 2014 film “Blackbird,” appearing alongside director Patrik-Ian Polk for a Q&A after the film.
One important feature of 2025’s festival, which runs for 11 days at Midtown Art Cinema and Out Front Theatre Company, is the number of documentaries that address real-world issues of censorship, racism, homophobia and political extremism.
This year’s theme is “Queer Propaganda” described as “a bold reclamation of a term often used to silence and shame,” on Out on Film’s website,
“Telling these stories and showcasing what we do and bringing people together is always important,” said Farmer. “Certainly, with this year, it’s more important than ever, because there are people right now who are trying to erase us and pretend we don’t exist. So our philosophy this year was full speed ahead.”
The 2025 Out on Film mix includes some genuine crowd-pleasers but also films that don’t shy away from controversy and lean hard into stories about how censorship, racism, garden-variety hatred and political divisiveness hurt all Americans, not just the LGBTQ+ community.
“I want people to come here first of all, and feel safe, feel like they’re part of their community. But also leave with something to think about,” said Farmer.
Some top picks you won’t want to miss:
‘Drive Back Home’
This deeply affecting film about two estranged Canadian brothers who connect over a childhood trauma during a road trip is based on director Michael Clowater’s own painful family history.
Weldon (Charlie Creed-Miles) is a plumber from the tiny, insular Canadian town of Stanley in the province of New Brunswick who travels to Toronto in 1970 to spring his brother out of jail for a charge of public indecency. Perley (Alan Cumming) is heartbreaking as his gay brother, a man who’s been abandoned in life and carries around his taxidermied pug as the only evidence of ever having been loved. Perley is all impulse and open wounds — you can see Weldon’s harsh condemnation of his lifestyle cutting him as deeply as a knife’s blade and the look on his face as he turns away from Weldon to silently cry is genuinely agonizing to watch.
‘The Librarians’
“The Librarians” focuses on how the religious right and political extremists created a movement under the guise of a seemingly rag tag group of suburban soccer moms, Moms for Liberty, to ban books from school libraries that deal with LGBTQ+ issues, race, women’s rights and other topics deemed “pornographic.”
In the process, these intertwined groups of far-right activists vilify and terrorize librarians, labeling them “pedophiles” and “perverts” and often making them strangers in their own communities, looking over their shoulders after threats of violence or death. In the meantime, these politicized groups first in Texas and then in Florida install right-wing supporters on school boards to further cement their social control.
Kim A. Snyder’s documentary is not being hyperbolic when she makes connections to other fictional and real-life book bans — from Germany in the 1930s to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s 1950s-era political witch hunt and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.”
‘Outerlands’
The nonbinary actor Asia Kate Dillon is a mesmerizing presence as Cass, a San Francisco nanny and server whose budding relationship with a fellow server ends in a challenging, prolonged babysitting gig with the neglectful woman’s tough-as-nails 12-year-old daughter Ari (Ridley Asha Bateman). The far from saccharine relationship — which involves bonding over video games and Cass trying to instill some street smarts in Ari — is a chance for a do-over for Cass, who is nursing their own childhood traumas in this incredibly poignant drama from director Elena Oxman.
‘I Was Born This Way’
Singer and activist Carl Bean grew up in a middle-class Baltimore family with a seemingly charmed life. But over time that happy veneer chipped away as sexual abuse, family abandonment and the challenges of coming out as gay began to sink in. Homophobia from friends and family was made more complicated by racism in the gay community.
“The truth of the matter was being gay was nowhere as tough as being Black and different in America,” Bean notes in the film. The voice behind the 1977 disco anthem and manifesto of gay identity, “I Was Born This Way,” Bean went on to become an AIDS activist, helping people of color feel loved while they were dying of HIV and educating his community about being safe. Bean’s story, often told through an inventive, engaging use of rotoscope animation (as well as appearances from Lady Gaga, Questlove, Billy Porter and Dionne Warwick), is a remarkable journey from hurt to healing, with the singer, as Archbishop Carl Bean, going on to form the Unity Fellowship Church where he preaches a message of acceptance and love.
FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW
Out on Film
Thursday, Sept. 25, to Sunday, Oct. 5. $12-$15, individual tickets; $205 all-access pass; $140 virtual pass; $425 all-access pass with donation. Landmark Midtown Art Cinema, 931 Monroe Drive NE, and Out Front Theatre Company, 999 Brady Ave. NW, Atlanta. 678-944-8158, outonfilm.org.
