Sir Ian Holm Cuthbert was an English actor. After graduating from RADA and beginning his career on the British stage as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he became a successful and prolific performer on television and in film. He received numerous accolades including two BAFTA Awards and a Tony Award, along with a nomination for an Academy Award. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998 for services to drama.
Zooey Claire Deschanel is an American actress and musician. She made her film debut in Mumford (1999) and had a supporting role in Cameron Crowe's film Almost Famous (2000). Deschanel is known for her deadpan roles in comedy films such as The Good Girl (2002), The New Guy (2002), Elf (2003), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Failure to Launch (2006), Yes Man (2008), 500 Days of Summer (2009), and Our Idiot Brother (2011). She has also ventured into dramatic film territory with Manic (2001), All the Real Girls (2003), Winter Passing (2005), Bridge to Terabithia (2007), The Happening (2008), and The Driftless Area (2015). From 2011 to 2018, she starred as Jess Day on the Fox sitcom New Girl, for which she received nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and three Golden Globe Awards.
Kimberly Ane Peirce is an American filmmaker, best known for her debut feature film, Boys Don't Cry (1999), which won Hilary Swank her first Academy Award for Best Actress. Peirce's second feature, Stop-Loss, was released by Paramount Pictures in 2008. Her third film Carrie was released on October 18, 2013. In addition to directing and writing, she is a governor of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and a National Board member of the Directors Guild of America.
Jenni Olson is a writer, archivist, historian, consultant, and non-fiction filmmaker based in Berkeley, California. She co-founded the pioneering LGBT website PlanetOut.com. Her two feature-length essay films — The Joy of Life (2005) and The Royal Road (2015) — premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Her work as an experimental filmmaker and her expansive personal collection of LGBTQ film prints and memorabilia were acquired in April 2020 by the Harvard Film Archive, and her reflection on the last 30 years of LGBT film history was published as a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema from Oxford University Press in 2021. In 2020, she was named to the Out Magazine Out 100 list. In 2021, she was recognized with the prestigious Special TEDDY Award at the Berlin Film Festival. She also campaigned to have a barrier erected on the Golden Gate Bridge to prevent suicides.
Outfest is an LGBTQ-oriented nonprofit that produces two film festivals, operates a movie streaming platform, and runs educational services for filmmakers in Los Angeles. Outfest is one of the key partners, alongside the Frameline Film Festival, the New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival, and the Inside Out Film and Video Festival, in launching the North American Queer Festival Alliance, an initiative to further publicize and promote LGBT film.
Andrew Gerhardt Droege is an American actor, comedian, writer, and director best known for his online impressions of Chloë Sevigny.
Andrew Haigh is an English filmmaker. He is best known for writing and directing the films Weekend (2011), 45 Years (2015), Lean on Pete (2017), and All of Us Strangers (2023). He also wrote and directed the HBO series Looking (2014–2015) and its film sequel Looking: The Movie (2016), as well as the BBC Two limited series The North Water (2021).
Geography Club is a 2013 American comedy drama film directed by Gary Entin from a screenplay by Edmund Entin, based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Brent Hartinger. The film stars Cameron Deane Stewart, Justin Deeley, Meaghan Martin, Allie Gonino, Nikki Blonsky, Andrew Caldwell, Marin Hinkle, Ana Gasteyer, and Scott Bakula.
Stephen Cone is an American filmmaker, best known for Henry Gamble's Birthday Party and Princess Cyd. He has received early career retrospectives on the Criterion Channel, Mubi, and at the Museum of the Moving Image, Berlin's Unknown Pleasures Festival and Manchester's Bigger Than Life.
Postcards from London is a 2018 British drama film written and directed by Steve McLean. It is McLean's follow-up to his 1994 film Postcards from America, which he based on the work of David Wojnarowicz. The film follows a teenage boy, Jim, who escapes his rural Essex town for London, only to find himself involved with a group of high-class gay escorts in Soho.
Suicide Kale is a 2016 American dark comedy film, directed by Carly Usdin and written by Brittani Nichols. The film centers on Jasmine and Penn, a lesbian couple who unexpectedly find a hidden suicide note in the home of their friends Billie and Jordan. The film premiered at the Queer Hippo International LGBT Film Festival in Houston, Texas on April 3, 2016. Usdin won the Audience Award for Best First U.S. Dramatic Feature at 2016 Outfest.
River Gallo is a Salvadoran-American filmmaker, actor, model, and intersex rights activist. They wrote, directed, and acted in the 2019 short film Ponyboi, which was the first film to feature an openly intersex actor playing an intersex person. Gallo adapted the screenplay for Ponyboi into a feature-length film by the same name, which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Gallo also played the lead role in the 2024 adaptation.
Cicada is a 2020 American romantic drama film directed by Matthew Fifer and Kieran Mulcare. Fifer co-wrote the film with Sheldon D. Brown, both of whom starred in leading roles.
Firebird is a 2021 romantic war drama film directed, co-written, and co-produced by Peeter Rebane, based on Sergey Fetisov's memoir The Story of Roman. The film stars Tom Prior, Oleg Zagorodnii, and Diana Pozharskaya. Set in the Soviet Air Force during the Cold War, it tells the true story of forbidden love between a private and a fighter pilot.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is a 2022 coming-of-age romantic drama film written and directed by Aitch Alberto. It is an adaptation of the 2012 novel of the same name by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. It follows two Mexican-American teenage boys who find an instant connection in 1987 El Paso, Texas, and stars Max Pelayo and Reese Gonzales as the title characters. Verónica Falcón, Kevin Alejandro, Eva Longoria and Eugenio Derbez complete the rest of the cast.
John Ira Palmer is an American film producer and director. He is a founding partner of the production company Projected Picture Works with Sean Penn and John Wildermuth.
