Frameline48 Films Coming to Theatres

Has it been a full month since Frameline48 ended on Pink Saturday at the Herbst Theater and the Roxie? We know it’s impossible to catch everything at the Festival, even if you took the entire 11 days off, so we wanted to put together a mini calendar for when some of the bigger FL48 films will be coming to Bay Area theatres before hitting VOD.

The first Frameline48 film to begin its national theatrical run post-Festival just so happens to be the winner of this year’s Outstanding First Feature Award: Luke Gilford’s National Anthem. This breathtaking portrait of a queer rodeo in the American Southwest opened last week at the AMC Kabuki in San Francisco and will be expanding across the country this weekend, as well as in the Bay itself — catch it starting July 19 at the AMC Kabuki, Landmark’s Opera Plaza, and AMC Bay Street in Emeryville.

MUBI will release Levan Akin’s stunning Crossing — winner of the Teddy Jury Award at this year’s Berlinale — in select theatres nationally on July 19 before adding additional cities in the coming weeks. Keep an eye out for it across the Bay Area before MUBI adds it to their virtual platform on August 30.

In August, two FL48 films that both premiered at Sundance will hit theatres: Mikko Mäkelä’s Sebastian and India Donaldson’s Good One. Kino Lorber will release Mäkelä’s sophomore feature — which follows a British writer (Ruaridh Mollica) exploring sex work as a source of creative inspiration — in NYC, LA, and SF at Landmark’s Opera Plaza at the on August 2. Good One, which also screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May, will begin its limited theatrical run from Metrograph Pictures on August 9.

Look out for these three FL48 titles in theatres in September. Exploring the gay partners behind such cinematic treasures as A Room with a View and Maurice, Merchant Ivory will open on September 6 at Landmark’s Opera Plaza from Cohen Media Group. A crowd-pleaser at both Sundance and Frameline, My Old Ass will open in select theatres on September 13, courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios. And be sure to mark your calendars for September 20, which is when Frameline48’s Comcast Audience Award for Narrative Feature, Ray Yeung’s All Shall Be Well, begins its limited run across the U.S. via Strand Releasing.

Strand Releasing has a few other FL48 titles onboard for a fall release, though no dates have been officially announced: Anthony Schatteman’s Young Hearts and Harrison Xu, Ivan Leung, & Katherine Dudas’ Extremely Unique Dynamic. Matt Fifer’s Haze, which stars Cole Doman and Brian J. Smith, will be available on Shudder and AMC+ in the fall. Music Box Films plans to release Alessandra Lacorazza’s In the Summers in the second half of 2024, and there’s a good chance that Magnolia Pictures will release Frameline48’s Comcast Audience Award for Documentary Feature — Alexis Spraic’s The World According to Allee Willis — before the end of the year.

One of the funniest films of Frameline48, Zacharias Mavroeidis’ The Summer with Carmen is now available on VOD in the U.S. from Dekkoo Films. The film will be available through Dekkoo’s streaming platform later this year. Severin Films announced the North American Blu-ray premiere of Paul Vecchiali’s Don’t Change Hands as part of their Summer Sale. Among the disc’s supplemental features is a video interview with director Yann Gonzalez (Knife+Heart) about Vecchiali’s influence on his work and what makes Don’t Change Hands such a major work in the queer cinema canon.