2019 Outfest LA LGBTQ Film Festival – Gala Screenings Announced

Outfest – the Los Angeles based non-profit organization promoting equality by creating, sharing, and protecting LGBTQ stories on the screen – today announced its 2019 Achievement Award recipient, Nisha Ganatra, and its galas, including Opening and Closing Night, for the 2019 Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival, presented by HBO. The nation’s premiere LGBTQ festival will be held July 18-28, 2019.

Nisha Ganatra, an Emmy-nominated and Golden Globe Award-winning director, producer and screenwriter, will receive the Achievement Award, Outfest’s highest honor, presented in recognition of a body of work that has made a significant contribution to LGBTQ film and media. Her most recent feature film, Late Night starring Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling, was picked up by Amazon Studios after debuting at Sundance Film Festival. In a time where women and people of color still make up only a fraction of directors, Ganatra is breaking barriers in both film and television as a multi award-winning female filmmaker including “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “Girls,” and “Transparent,” for which she received a Golden Globe Award.

“Nisha stormed into our hearts with her Outfest Los Angles Audience Award winning film, Chutney Popcorn. Since then, she has forged a reputation as someone who matches a strong sense of vision with an openness to collaboration. Nisha has continued to use her confident artistry to create change and push at the barriers which keep women and people of color at the margins in this industry. Her latest film, Late Night, dazzled at Sundance with a $13M sale to Amazon — a testament to her work, her vision, and her vast potential,” commented Outfest’s Executive Director Christopher Racster.

The annual festival will open on the evening of Thursday, July 18th at the Orpheum Theater with Rachel Mason’s intimate and absorbing documentary, Circus of Books, about L.A.’s legendary gay pornography emporium run by her parents, Karen and Barry Mason. The film was recently picked up by Netflix.

Additional gala screenings include: Adam (U.S. Centerpiece), Ariel Schrag’s YA novel adaptation of the same name directed by Outfest alum and “Transparent” producer Rhys Ernst; Hari Sama’s Sundance hit  This Is Not Berlin (International Centerpiece), set in the 1980s Mexico City queer music scene; Michael Barnett’s Changing the Game (Documentary Centerpiece) which focuses on three resilient transgender high school athletes fighting to compete as their authentic gender amidst national scrutiny; and Straight Up (Breakthrough Centerpiece), a sharp and witty Los Angeles-set comedy written/directed by and starring newcomer James Sweeney.

“Circus of Books first opened in 1982, coincidentally the same year Outfest began. It’s thrilling that these queer Los Angeles institutions’ parallel histories will converge the same year that we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Stonewall at our festival. It will be undeniably powerful to pay tribute to these landmark events that paved the way for today’s generation of emerging queer talent to tell the type of diverse, risk-taking stories represented by our gala selections,” said Outfest Director of Festival Programs Mike Dougherty.

The 2019 Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival will close on Sunday, July 28^th at The Theatre at the Ace Hotel with Hannah Pearl Utt’s Before You Know It, a quirky comedy about two sisters who discover the mother they’d long been told was dead is actually a famous soap star, starring Utt, Judith Light, Alec Baldwin, Tim Daly, Jen Tullock, Mike Colter and Mandy Patinkin. The Achievement Award Ceremony will take place at the Closing Night Gala, followed by the screening of Before You Know It.

The complete lineup for the 2019 Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival will be announced the first week of June.