Vancouver Queer Film Festival unveils 2026 program, slated for September event
Compelling shorts, strong documentaries, and features such as Apolo and Gugu’s World bring forward local and international voices
Gugu’s World
“Kiloran Bay”
OUT ON SCREEN HAS announced 87 features and shorts from here and around the world for the 38th annual Vancouver Queer Film Festival. It runs from September 10 to 20 at venues around Vancouver, and then streams from September 21 to 27.
This year’s theme is A Seat at the Table, spotlighting films by and for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community—or, as VQFF puts it, “expanding the table rather than narrowing it; bringing together films that challenge, delight, provoke, and connect while reflecting the richness and complexity of queer lives across generations, identities, and borders”.
Ecosystems Not Empires, a collection of seven short films envisioning queer futures rooted in care, kinship, and collective liberation, opens the festival, including “Kiloran Bay”, starring Alan Cumming as a gay man who returns to Scotland with his partner to attend a wedding cèilidh.
The event’s centrepiece is Apolo, a documentary following Brazilian trans couple Isis Broken and Lourenzo Gabriel as they navigate an unexpected pregnancy; it features a post-screening Q&A.
The closing film is Gugu’s World, a heartwarming portrait of a queer Brazilian boy secretly tending to his grandmother, who is facing the onset of Alzheimer’s.
Amid workshops, parties, and other events, the 2026 program also features First Death, featuring Kimia Behpoornia, Dylan Mulvaney, and Vic Michaelis; Beba From 5 to 9, starring Michaela Jaé Rodriguez; Test, featuring Matthew Morrison and Brock Yurich; and Again Again, starring House of the Dragon actor Abigail Thorn.
In the fest’s strong lineup of documentary features, Barbara Forever looks at pioneering lesbian and queer experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer, while Saving Etting Street follows a carpenter teaching women construction and money skills, helping them rebuild their lives and Baltimore communities through home-renovation projects.
The Coast Is Queer series also returns for its 26th year, celebrating queer filmmaking in British Columbia, including work from local filmmaker and actors Jess McLeod (Normal, The Audacity) and Johnny Wu (Joy Ride), alongside emerging BC discoveries.
There is much more; you can find the full schedule here.
Special presentation tickets are on sale now, with festival passes and a full ticket release on August 17. 
Again Again
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