QueerFrames Expands to Southeast Asia With New Mentor Class

QueerFrames Screenwriting Lab is taking a bigger swing this year, expanding into Southeast Asia and assembling a lineup of mentors that actually matters. The initiative—which builds scripts for emerging queer, trans, and nonbinary filmmakers—is bringing in heavyweight voices like Isabel Sandoval, festival programmer Tricia Tuttle, and producer Anup Poudel to guide the 2026 cohort.

The lab is pulling storytellers from across India, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, and diaspora communities. Eight fiction features made the cut, each one centered on queer narratives that go deeper than surface-level representation. That's the whole point: queerness isn't decoration here, it's structural.

This kind of regional expansion matters. Too much of the conversation around queer cinema still orbits the same festivals and gatekeepers. Southeast Asia's got stories that rarely break through to international attention, and a mentorship program with real industry pull could shift that. Whether these eight projects actually get made and seen is the next chapter.

Read the full story at Variety → https://variety.com/2026/film/news/queerframes-lab-expands-southeast-asia-fourth-cohort-2-1236871948/