NewFest 2016: New York’s LGBT Film Festival Announces Audience Winners

The 2016 NewFest, New York’s LGBT Film Festival has concluded its 28th year and with that, the winners of the audience awards from this year’s fest have been announced. 

You can take a look below for all the winners along with their respective trailers.

SUICIDE KALE, directed by Carly Usdin, won the Audience Award for Outstanding Feature Film.

Also the winner of the Audience Award for Best First Feature at Outfest, SUICIDE KALE is a darkly comic farce about two lesbian couples doing their best to navigate a social landmine during an awkward lunch together. When new partners Jasmine and Penn find an anonymous suicide note in their friends’ bedroom, they hatch a plan to figure out who wrote it. The talented, diverse cast has a knack for comic timing, managing to keep things light and hilarious even as both couples discover way more than they bargained for.

POLITICAL ANIMALS, directed by Jonah Markowitz and Tracy Wares, won the Audience Award for Outstanding Documentary Feature.

Also the winner of Grand Jury and Audience Awards at LA Film Festival, this unflinchingly honest and expansive documentary looks into the early days of the advocacy that paved the way for the LGBTQ rights victories of today. After introducing an anti-bullying bill aimed to protect LGBTQ schoolchildren, California State Representative Sheila Kuehl had to endure grandstanding speeches comparing homosexuals to pedophiles. It was in such a hostile environment that she and fellow out representatives Christine Kehoe, Jackie Goldberg, and Carole Migden passed California’s first LGBTQ anti-discrimination laws. Brilliantly framing the decades-long struggle within archival clips of recent progress, when President Obama announced that “love is love,” alongside the groundbreaking work  of often-unacknowledged heroes, POLITICAL ANIMALS offers first-hand evidence why there must be LGBTQ representation in elected office.

POLITICAL ANIMALS Festival Trailer from POLITICAL ANIMALS on Vimeo.

SIGN, directed by Andrew Keenan-Bolger, won the Audience Award for Outstanding Narrative Short.

Through vignettes, music, and sign language, the story of a relationship between Ben, a hearing man, and Aaron, who is deaf, unfolds.

SHAPE UP: GAY IN THE BLACK BARBERSHOP, directed by Derrick L. Middleton, won the Audience Award for Outstanding Documentary Short.

Derrick L. Middleton takes a critical look at New York black barbershop culture, usually thought of as a safe, familial gathering place, and how young queer men are treated there.