Tanzyn Crawford and Emily Grant in Souvenir
The HollyShorts Film Festival returns to Hollywood for its 22nd edition from August 13–23, 2026, bringing together an expansive selection of short films from emerging and established filmmakers around the world. The Oscar® and BAFTA-qualifying festival continues its commitment to diverse storytelling with a wide-ranging LGBTQIA+ programme that explores queer identity, love, family, belonging, sexuality, desire, friendship and self-discovery across drama, comedy, horror, animation and experimental storytelling.
Taking place at the iconic TCL Chinese Theatres and venues throughout Hollywood, HollyShorts has become one of the world’s leading showcases for short-form cinema. This year’s LGBTQIA+ selection reflects the breadth of contemporary queer filmmaking, moving between intimate character studies and genre-driven stories while giving filmmakers space to approach identity and representation in distinctive ways.
Stories of Love, Identity and Connection
Among the programme’s highlights is Callback, starring Justin H. Min, in which what initially appears to be a joyful career breakthrough begins to create emotional turmoil for a couple. The film explores the complicated ways professional opportunity can affect personal relationships and the expectations that come with shared ambitions.
(0,∞) stars Brandon Wilson, Alex Blue Davis, Marianne Rendón and Cheech Manohar in a heartfelt story about two men navigating the unexpectedly emotional process of applying for a mortgage together. By focusing on an everyday milestone, the film places queer relationships within a familiar experience while examining the emotions, commitments and questions that accompany building a life together.
Renée Marie Petropoulos’ Souvenir, which won at SXSW, takes a more intimate approach to teenage relationships. Starring Tanzyn Crawford and Emily Grant, the film explores teenage love and consent, while Gallina examines childhood friendship and belonging through the perspective of a young boy confronted with impossible choices.
The programme also includes FLY, directed by Carlton Daniel, following an ambitious ballet dancer whose rivalry with another performer gradually develops into something deeper during auditions for a coveted apprenticeship. It Comes in Waves captures another form of awakening, following a young man through a transformative summer as he begins to understand something new about himself.
HIGH VOLTAGE explores the increasingly blurred boundary between friendship and first love, while Hummingbird follows a sheltered Catholic schoolgirl who risks everything for one unforgettable night with her openly queer classmate.
Family, Culture and Belonging
Several films expand the LGBTQIA+ conversation beyond romantic relationships to explore family, cultural expectations and identity.
Delay follows a gay Chinese father whose attempt to attend his son’s wedding takes an unexpected turn, creating a story that brings together family responsibility, cultural expectations and queer identity.
Diego explores sexuality, disability and masculinity within a close-knit Romani family, offering a portrait of identity shaped by both personal experience and the expectations of one’s community.
These films contribute to one of the strongest aspects of the HollyShorts LGBTQIA+ programme: its refusal to treat queer storytelling as a single experience. Instead, the selection presents characters from different generations, cultures, families and social backgrounds, each navigating their own understanding of identity and connection.
When Queer Stories Meet Horror
Genre filmmaking provides another important space for this year’s LGBTQIA+ selections, with several films using horror to explore fear, repression, desire and social persecution.
Camp Oleander transforms the conversion-camp narrative into unsettling folk horror, using the conventions of the genre to confront the psychological and cultural consequences of institutionalized attempts to suppress queer identity.
Barrett Carroll makes a directorial debut with Eat, a visceral body-horror story that begins when two strangers connect through a kink app. The film combines queer desire with physical horror, using genre filmmaking to explore intimacy and vulnerability in an increasingly unsettling way.
The Beard imagines a chilling near-future United States in which being queer has become a felony, creating a dystopian scenario built around discrimination, fear and survival.
Meanwhile, In The Flesh delivers psychological horror through the story of a seemingly perfect housewife who harbours dangerous obsessions. The film uses domestic unease and psychological tension to reveal what lies beneath an apparently controlled exterior.
Satire, Performance and Queer Identity
Comedy and satire also play a significant role in the selection.
Method Cowboy takes aim at Hollywood and performative identity through the story of a struggling actor who pretends to be gay in order to secure the role of a lifetime. The film uses the absurdity of the premise to explore questions surrounding authenticity, representation and the entertainment industry’s complicated relationship with identity.
Scissors takes the familiar slasher formula and gives it a queer twist, turning the hunter into the hunted and reshaping the conventions of the genre around LGBTQIA+ characters.
Elsewhere, The Late in Life Guide to Modern Day Lesbianism affectionately spoofs the corporate training videos of the 1990s while offering a humorous introduction to contemporary lesbian culture. Its approach combines nostalgia with comedy to create a playful take on identity and community.
Animation Expands the Conversation
Animation is also represented within the LGBTQIA+ programme, demonstrating how queer stories can move beyond conventional live-action filmmaking.
The Lovers, directed by Alice Mao and Sophia O. Paez, reimagines Filipino mythology through the story of a seafood chef who becomes involved in a forbidden romance with a mythical sirena. The film combines folklore, fantasy and queer romance to create a visually distinctive story rooted in cultural mythology.
Addicted To It offers a very different animated experience, using fast-paced comedy to satirize smartphone addiction. Its inclusion alongside the festival’s broader LGBTQIA+ selection demonstrates the variety of approaches being used by filmmakers working across animation and genre storytelling.
Artistic Reinvention and Finding Yourself
Other selections focus on personal transformation and the complicated relationship between memory, creativity and identity.
PANGEA presents a lyrical meditation on love, memory and artistic reinvention, following a woman who spends one final day attempting to revive both her former lover’s creativity and their shared past. The film explores the emotional space between what a relationship once was and what remains after it changes.
Betty St. Clair follows a Chinese American drag queen preparing for a high-stakes performance, bringing together questions of cultural identity, performance and self-expression.
Grown, starring Olivia Scott Welch and Savy Jackson, adds another perspective to the programme, while Save the Date, starring Ken Barnett, follows an engaged couple attempting to capture the perfect “Save the Date” photograph. Beneath the seemingly simple premise is another story about relationships, expectations and the performance of a perfect life.
A Broader Platform for LGBTQIA+ Filmmakers
Founded in 2005, HollyShorts has established itself as a major platform for short-form filmmaking, championing emerging voices while showcasing work from acclaimed filmmakers across genres and disciplines.
Its LGBTQIA+ programme is particularly notable for its range. Rather than focusing exclusively on coming-out narratives or stories of discrimination, the selection presents queer characters experiencing the full spectrum of life: falling in love, navigating family relationships, building careers, confronting social expectations, discovering sexuality, dealing with loss and finding freedom through self-expression.
That diversity is important because it allows LGBTQIA+ characters to exist within stories that are not solely defined by their sexuality or gender identity. Romance, horror, comedy, fantasy, satire and family drama become vehicles through which queer filmmakers can explore universal experiences while still offering perspectives that have historically been underrepresented on screen.
HollyShorts Continues to Champion New Voices
As an Oscar® and BAFTA-qualifying festival, HollyShorts provides filmmakers with more than a screening opportunity. Its position within the international short-film circuit makes it an important platform for filmmakers looking to introduce their work to audiences, industry professionals and fellow artists.
The 2026 LGBTQIA+ programme reflects that broader mission, bringing together filmmakers who approach queer storytelling from different artistic, cultural and generational perspectives. From the intimate relationship drama of Callback and Souvenir to the genre experimentation of Camp Oleander, Eat and Scissors, the selection demonstrates how much creative territory exists within contemporary LGBTQIA+ short cinema.
With its combination of established performers, emerging filmmakers, genre experimentation and deeply personal storytelling, HollyShorts 2026 offers audiences an opportunity to experience queer cinema that is as diverse in form as it is in subject.
The complete HollyShorts 2026 Official Selection is available on the HollyShorts website.
Tickets and festival passes are available through the HollyShorts ticket and passes page.
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