NewFest38 opens this week with Rami Malek and Andrew Scott films
NewFest38 runs from 15 October in New York, featuring LGBTQ+ films including The Man I Love starring Rami Malek and Elsinore with Andrew Scott.
New York's NewFest LGBTQ+ Film Festival returns on Thursday, 15 October, with a programme spanning international cinema, documentaries, independent features and television. The 38th edition runs until 25 October, bringing LGBTQ+ stories to venues across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, with selected films also available to stream online in the United States.
Among the programme's headline titles is The Man I Love, directed by Ira Sachs and starring Oscar winner Rami Malek. The film follows a downtown actor living with AIDS in late-1980s New York, returning to a period when the epidemic profoundly affected gay communities and the city's artistic world. It is scheduled as the festival's closing-night film on 25 October.
Andrew Scott also features in Elsinore, which tells the story of Ian Charleson, the Scottish actor whose performance as Hamlet became one of the defining achievements of his career despite his serious illness. Scott plays Charleson in a film that explores the relationship between artistic ambition, personal struggle and the demands of performance.
The festival's opening-night selection is La Bola Negra, which follows three generations of men connected through pain, desire and love across a century of Spanish history. Other featured titles include Clarissa, an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway set in Lagos, and Club Kid, a story about a New York club promoter whose life changes when the son he never knew arrives.
A wider view of LGBTQ+ storytelling
NewFest38 brings together more than 140 films and other projects, giving audiences opportunities to discover work from established filmmakers alongside emerging voices. Its programme spans romance, comedy, documentaries, historical stories and experimental cinema, reflecting the range of experiences explored by LGBTQ+ filmmakers.
In-person screenings are scheduled at venues including SVA Theatre, BAM Rose Cinemas, Nitehawk Cinema Prospect Park and the LGBT Community Center. Selected films and short-film programmes will also be available through the festival's virtual platform from 15 to 30 October, with online viewing restricted to audiences in the United States.
The combination of major performers, independent productions and international stories makes the festival an opportunity to see films that may not receive wide theatrical releases. For viewers interested in gay history, contemporary relationships and LGBTQ+ representation on screen, the programme offers several distinct entry points.
NewFest38 runs from 15 to 25 October 2026. Tickets, individual screening times and virtual passes are available through the festival's official website.
